Dean Howard, president of North American Höganäs Co., elected President of MPIF in 2019, was deprived of the opportunity to present his “State of the Industry” speech at WorldPM2020, the PM World Congress in Montreal that was cancelled because of the pandemic. The text was published as a press release at the end of June and will appear in the summer issue of the International Journal of Powder Metallurgy. The following notes summarize key aspects of the presentation.
Howard began by noting the “cautious optimism” in the business outlook for the North American PM industry at the start of 2020, based on the MPIF members annual survey held in September 2019. While “the shocking COVID-19 pandemic damage on manufacturing and the global economy was unthinkable” at that time, “this global disruption [could] be a wake-up call that [triggers] a robust movement to bring off-shore manufacturing back to N. America.”
