Industry Flocks to 17th Annual SPE Automotive TPO Conference

Americhem enjoyed a key role in this year’s SPE TPO Automotive Conference, held annually in Detroit. Our speaker, color expert Rick Mathew, helped kick off the conference on Sunday, Oct. 4, with an opening address/workshop on colors for TPO. Rick touched on numerical versus visual color tolerancing and creating color harmony between automotive TPO materials and other polymers, including polypropylene. This session was very well attended, with an estimated 50 conference participants in attendance. This is particularly noteworthy since the address occurred on Sunday evening, the evening before most of the conference activities were to commence. 

We got a lot of good feedback on the presentation, and a number of people stopped to tell me how entertaining and engaging Rick was. They also mentioned how his address made them think differently about color representation. The SPE board also appreciated our contributions and would like us to contribute similar content to next year’s conference.

As far as the conference itself, the attendance was the best I’ve seen in my years of participation. In particular, Monday’s programming was attended by a large throng, the best one day attendance I’ve seen at the conference. The receptions and other networking opportunities were outstanding and extremely well attended.

There was good representation from OEMs and others within the automotive supply chain, such as resin and additive companies. The exhibition portion of the programming seems to add more exhibitors each year. Our technical team was extremely pleased with the subject matter and the papers that were delivered. Each year, we see a lot of familiar faces, and the conference really has become the automotive plastics industry event where everybody is together in one place at one time. 

Industry personnel were optimistic about the growth of TPO materials in automotive applications and they were enthusiastic about the industry in general. The global diversity of the conference attendees continues to grow and evolve each year. Next year, the conference will potentially go overseas for the first time with the 2016 Shanghai TPO Conference, to be held March 22-24 in Shanghai, China. Look for Americhem to participate.

We continue to find that this growing event is an excellent platform for innovations and insight from Americhem. If you were at the conference, we’d love to hear your feedback, so leave us a comment to continue the conversation.

Brett Conway
Group Director – Plastics, Americhem Inc.

Environmental Themes and Record Attendance Characterize SPE TPO Conference

This week’s 16^th annual Society of Plastics Engineers TPO Automotive Engineered Polyolefins Conference was bigger and better than ever.  More than 500 people attended the conference, most of them representing molders, tier suppliers and OEMs in the automotive industry. The event, held annually in Detroit, has grown steadily over the last few years and seems to be outgrowing the current venue.

In addition, attendees included 15 media members from the automotive and plastics press. The media attendees even included Chinese and Spanish language publications this year. The exhibitors were also at an all-time high, with 72 exhibiting companies, including Americhem, occupying much more floor space than in prior years.

There were over 60 technical presentations given and several of the topics revolved around an environmental theme. IAC and Ford gave one of the initial papers on bio-based materials, and that conference hall was dedicated to environmental topics for the balance of the conference’s first day. Another key theme was lightweighting of polyolefin parts, and this topic continues to be a big focus in this industry as OEMs struggle to meet Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. These topics were of specific interest to Americhem, as this week, our automotive manufacturing plant in Ohio is completing an ISO 14001 audit. This standard sets out the criteria for an Environmental Management System. More and more automotive suppliers are realizing the importance of this standard to their customers.

With the record attendance, the exhibitor hall was filled with Tier suppliers and OEM’s looking for suppliers who can help them solve complex problems and add value in the global automotive marketplace. For our part, Americhem’s booth was visited by most of our automotive customers. Our message revolved around Americhem’s color management capabilities. As a global supplier of automotive color masterbatch, Americhem helps OEM’s and Tier 1’s manage the variability of raw materials used in extrusion and injection molding technologies. With examples we can point to from our work with a large global OEM, we are able to demonstrate the color harmony that Americhem helps promote across different materials, plants, suppliers and geographies. The message is becoming more commonly understood and is gaining momentum within the industry.

It’s exciting to be part of the growing community that this conference represents. We certainly plan to keep our ear to the pulse of these SPE members and the tier suppliers and OEM customers they represent. We look forward to participating again in 2015.

Brian Kady
Market Manager, Americhem, Inc.