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The Secret Sector
Study: Plastics is state's fastest-growing manufacturing sector
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Business New Haven
8/21/2000
By: BNH
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Maybe the advice Mr. McQuire gave Dustin Hoffman's Ben Braddock on commencement eve in Mike Nichols' The Graduate was right on the money.
Plastics.
Little touted in the media and certainly not one of the state's official “clusters,” Connecticut's plastics industry has been charting impressive growth at a time when manufacturing in general is flat or down.
Between 1994 and '99, plastics-industry shipments rose by 45 percent in the state, according to a new study by the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. (SPI), a Washington, D.C.-based trade group.
The report asserts that 372 plaqstics-industry facilities in Connecticut generated $4.5 billion in shipments in 1999. Employment in the industry is likewise strong: Last year plastics accounted for 23,100 jobs in Connecticut, an increase of 21 percent in five years. Nationwide, the state ranks 21st in plastics-industry employment.
Nationwide, says the study, the plastics industry generated 1,525,600 jobs last year and contributed $304 billion in annual shipments.
The new study, conducted by SPI by Probe Economics of Millwood, N.Y., also noted that international trade is responsible for 15 percent of U.S. plastics-industry jobs. In 1999, the industry had an overall trade surplus of $5.2 billion
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