Kaysun Blog

As Hurricane Ida unleashed its Category 4 fury on the state of Louisiana, plastics industry professionals kept a wary eye on the storm’s path. The repercussions of Hurricane Laura and Winter Storm Uri upended the resins market, which is still struggling. As the fifth strongest hurricane to ever make landfall in the continental United States¹, Ida could have easily wiped out any progress made toward market restoration.

But, for the most part, Ida spared the plastics industry from further devastation. The hurricane veered away from the hub of resin production facilities in western Louisiana and eastern Texas, some of which were just coming back online.

Consumer applications are diverse. Simply having products on the market isn't enough to build a customer base or keep pace with the competition.

Understanding the latest injection molding industry trends and partnering with a custom injection molder to apply them in creating highly differentiated products more readily translates to sustained success. It also gives you greater control over quality, cost, and time to market.

Injection molding industry trends suggest that a number of factors influence applications within the consumer market, such as:

An estimated 80% of a project’s costs are determined within the design phase.¹ For injection molded parts, tooling often consumes a good share of the budget and decision-making, but it’s not the only consideration.

Value-added services (also known as secondary operations) are essential and sometimes overlooked during design because of their injection molding post-processing status. However, identifying the proper value-added services early in the project timeline can help eliminate injection molding defects that could ultimately lead to costly fixes.

On the whole, the global plastics market value topped out just shy of $580 billion in 2020. Of that revenue, the injection molding application segment held the largest share at just over 43%¹ — a strong indicator of how plastics are fast becoming manufacturers' primary solutions to weight, sustainability,  and compliance challenges.

But, injection-molded components are only reliable solutions if they perform to the expectations of industries that increasingly depend on plastics such as the automotive, electronics/electrical, and construction sectors. Performance is largely dictated by the resin chosen for a specific injection-molded part, but which material is the right one?

For an accurate answer, manufacturers turn to Finite Element Analysis (FEA) of plastic components and custom injection molders experienced in all aspects of testing. 

There’s no denying that pandemic-related, weather-influenced, and manmade disruptions have caused chaos within the plastics industry. For OEMs, finding injection molding solutions during these turbulent times is problematic. Finding knowledgeable molders to take on complicated design, engineering, injection molding, and other challenges that less skilled molders can’t handle is equally as difficult.

From excessive energy consumption and scrap to general resin use, the injection molding process has historically raised some ecological concerns. The alarm is neither surprising nor unique to injection molders or the industries they serve.

However, as some experts project that the earth may be mere decades away from environmental collapse¹, there are important choices to be made.

Manufacturers across industries continue to rely heavily upon custom injection molders to help design, engineer, and produce solutions for complex applications. Not every molder is capable of delivering on these expectations, but those that are will undoubtedly insist upon exceptional injection molding quality control.

 As a trusted partner to OEMs in medical, automotive, industrial, and consumer markets Kaysun is deeply committed to quality and the processes necessary to maintain it. Through strategic implementation of quality assurance initiatives and continuous improvement cycles, our customers are confident in attaining desired results.

The gaps between raw materials, demand, and delivery continue to define a very uncertain future for the plastics industry. Manufacturers, injection molders, and all others dependent on plastics are understandably at a loss.

Finding solutions generally requires finding replacements for nylon, acetal resins, polysulfone (PSU), polyphthalamide (PPA), polyphenylene sulfide (PPS), polyphenylene oxide (PPO), and syndiotactic polystyrene (SPS) — a task not easily completed in light of the catastrophic resin shortage.

When it comes to designing and launching a new injection-molded part, design engineers can always count on:

• The design drives part performance
• If something goes wrong with the part, the design is the first place to look for answers
• The importance of part design increases considerably with tight tolerance injection molding

No pressure, right?