Editor Don Loepp Frequency Weekly Year founded 1989 | Categories Plastics Total circulation
(2011) 45,293 | |
Company Crain Communications Inc. | ||
Plastics News is a weekly, 46,000-circulation trade newspaper delivering global news to a primarily North American market. Founded by Crain Communications Inc. in Akron, Ohio, in 1989, it covers the business of the global plastics industry. The publication relocated to Crain's corporate headquarters in Detroit in 2013.
Plastics News focuses on commercial, financial, legislative and market-related developments worldwide that affect North American plastic product manufacturers and their suppliers and customers. The publication launched a Web site in 1996.
Today it is part of the Crain Global Polymer Group, which includes six print publications, seven websites, eight trade shows, more than a dozen conferences, multiple e-newsletters, a research department and custom publishing capabilities. The group started to take shape after Crain’s purchase in July 2007 of the UK-based polymer publishing assets of Emap Communications Ltd. That added two established print publications – Plastics & Rubber Weekly (now branded as PRW) and the monthly Plastics News Europe – to the stable, as well as several European events.
The U.S. publication launched its PlasticsNews.com website in 1996, and today that audited site attracts more than 80,000 unique visitors per month. The company launched its bilingual Plastics News China eWeekly as a free e-mail newsletter in May 2005, along with a companion Plastics News China website that today attracts more than 15,000 unique visitors per month. Both products are offered in English and simplified Chinese.
PN also organizes several events, including its annual Executive Forum, Plastics in Medical Devices, and various other conferences.
Since 1996, PN has given its Processor of the Year Award to a North American plastics processor, and it honors the winner in a ceremony each year at the Executive Forum. Beginning in 2011, it also began to present three PN Excellence Awards to processors for excelling in customer relations, employee relations and industry/public service. Plastics News also started giving out Best Places to Work in Plastics awards in 2014.
Beginning in 1998, PN also has honored the work of designers by presenting its IDSA/Plastics News Design Award at a conference organized by the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. This award is co-sponsored by the Industrial Designers Society of America.