If last month’s round of next-gen console launches left you in a fog, prepare yourself for the incoming Steam Machine. Valve has released only 300 beta kits into the wild, so grab your companion cube and hold tight -- we’re about to open one up.

 

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It has been a tumultuous year for the medical technology industry, as it struggles to adapt to a changing business landscape while continuing to advance innovation within strict regulatory guidelines. That dynamic will continue in 2014 and beyond. Here is an admittedly ad hoc selection of areas of interest for the medtech sector. This list is by no means exhaustive or authoritative--feel free to add your comments and perspectives on the year ahead.  

Scholle Corporation and Netherlands-based IPN have jointly announced an agreement to combine their businesses to form a new diverse performance packaging company.

 

Employing over 2,000 people globally, the combined IPN/Scholle entity will provide performance-based packaging solutions from its multiple manufacturing locations in North America, Europe, Australia, Latin America, China, and India to the world’s largest brands. 

CHINA continues to cross the river by feeling the stones and anyone in the chemicals industry who says that they have a clear idea of where this is going to end is probably being more than a little disingenuous.

 

There will be a lot of experimentation as China tries to overhaul its growth model with some successes and also some failures. What nobody can predict with any degree of genuine confidence is whether, in the end, the whole effort will succeed or fail. 

Taiwanese auxiliary equipment maker Shini Group is relocating to a bigger location in early 2014, moving out of rented space into a new site it says will be eight times larger. The move for the Taipei-based company will take place by the end of January or early February.

 

"Currently, we have a production facility in Vasai in the Thane district. The new plant is coming up at Chaken in Pune," said J.N. Bhat, managing director of Shini Plastics Technologies India Pvt. Ltd...

Indian rotational molder Maharashtra Maha Polyplast Pvt. Ltd. is developing a new line of products to improve living space in India's dense metropolitan areas. With concrete jungles erected overnight in India, there is hardly space left for plants and greenery, the company said. Moreover, the fast pace life in bigger cities have hardly left anyone to spend time with plants.

 

Maharashtra Maha Polyplast seeks to bring city dwellers closer to plants through a rotationally molde...

Mitsubishi Motors Corp. has delayed the U.S. launch of its Outlander plug-in hybrid until 2015, two years after its global debut, because of bottlenecks in battery production. The company is ramping up battery supply, but it won't be enough to start U.S. deliveries of the electrified crossover next year as planned.

 

Mitsubishi President Osamu Masuko said the problem is tight capacity at its main battery supplier, Lithium Energy Japan. The company is a joint venture between M...

MUMBAI -- Wittmann Battenfeld GmbH is rapidly expanding its product range in India, with its operation in Chennai about to introduce an upgraded range of dryers for 2014.

 

The ongoing slowdown has not hurt business, said Nanda Kumar, president of Wittmann Battenfeld India Pvt. Ltd., in an interview at Plastivision Mumbai 2013. 

MUMBAI -- Malaysian calcium carbonate maker Zantat Sdn. Bhd. is doubling capacity at its Ipoh plant with an eye on increasing demand from the Indian companies.

 

The plant, in Perak, Malaysia, now has the capacity to manufacture 110,000 metric tons of calcium carbonate powder used in masterbatches. 

Eyewear and helmet manufacturer Carrera got itself noticed last year, when it released an accordion-like bike helmet that can be folded in or out to accommodate different head sizes. Now, the company has brought that same idea to the skiing and snowboarding-oriented Snow Foldable Helmet.

 

The helmet consists of one lateral middle section, along with two side sections. Those latter two pieces can be pulled out to either side, to match the width of the wearer's head, and then ...

As North American vehicle production rises, suppliers are scrambling to find many types of engineers: mechanical, software, electrical, manufacturing -- you name it.

 

Last month, a survey of 100 North American suppliers revealed that 90 percent planned to expand their engineering staffs. Of those, 75 percent said they were having trouble finding candidates, according to the survey by the Original Equipment Suppliers Association.  

Plastics Color Corp. will add 40,000 square feet to its facility in Calumet City, Ill., to boost production at the site by 40 percent.

 

The Calumet City-based maker of color concentrates, compounds and custom masterbatches said in a Dec. 26 press release that the facility produces black compounds, which have seen an increased customer demand. PCC has already boosted capacity there by 18 percent by moving to a seven-day-a-week schedule. 

Milan, Italy-based Sacmi Group is moving ahead with plans to assemble Negri Bossi injection presses in India. The company bought 12 acres of land in Sanand, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, to set-up its own new facility. Sanand is a major hub for India's auto industry.

 

“Currently, we are operating from rented premises in Ahmedabad and land has been taken to build a new factory in Sanand,” said V. Ramesh, CEO of Sacmi Engineering India Pvt. Ltd., at the P...

Trostel Ltd. is expanding all facets of its business with a series of projects that will impact both its rubber molding and compounding operations.

 

The company is building an addition onto its headquarters facility in Lake Geneva that will bring some manufacturing to the site; it just completed a building expansion at its Whitewater, Wis., compounding division that will allow for the addition of new capital equipment; and it is upgrading equipment and focusing on lean manufactu...

Catalyst developer Econic Technologies Ltd. has secured a £5.1 million ($8.3 million) cash injection to develop its technology for manufacturing polymers from carbon dioxide.

 

Econic Technologies' carbon dioxide based polycarbonate and polyols replace between 30-50 percent of traditional petrochemical feedstock resulting in 30-40 percent cost reductions, said the firm. 

The booming North American auto industry is generating a lot of activity for both automakers and suppliers, but an official for one company said the rapid regrowth of the industry from the depths of recession opens the potential for suppliers to make more complete modules.

 

Auto suppliers have sought the opportunity to make complete systems – such as front-end modules, entire cockpits and roof systems – for years in North America, but the automakers have been hesitan...

China's growing middle class and aging population will affect the global medical device market in 2014, according to speakers at the Society of Plastic Engineers' first China conference, held Dec. 11-12 in Shanghai.

 

"In China, the 83 million people defined as middle class only represent less than 10 percent of the population," said Michael Taylor, senior director of international affairs and trade at the Washington-based Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. &...

When many consumers think of plastic, Tupperware comes to mind. Thanks to the company's direct sales strategy, the famously kitschy Tupperware parties that were popular in the 1950s and still go on today; perhaps no plastic brand occupies a bigger place in American pop culture.

 

But Tupperware's design team is not stuck in the past. David Kusuma, vice president of product development and R&D worldwide at Tupperware Brands Corp., says the company's innovation cont...

The threat of injury posed from falling debris when buildings collapse – such as occurred at the Apollo Theatre in London – has already been the focus of polyurea practitioners and the material could provide a solution.

 

Polyurea coatings are already being used to strengthen structures in war and earthquake zones – the British Army use the application in Iraq – is a subject that could gain some attention as accident investigators pick through the debris a...