March’s tour will be at the Abt Electronic and Appliance facility in Glenview. If you have not visit Abt’s before, you should take this chance to experience the business that defied most franchise model, and enjoys the benefit of good, satisfied customer day in and day out. Join us this month to learn what’s new with the unique Chicago business and how they manage to keep the good will growing.

February’s topic will be presented by our Chapter’s VP of Technical board member, Tim Bohrer. He has assembled a number of interesting details on the use, habits, and trend of this food preparation platform. Microwave ovens have been around in the family kitchen since the early seventies in the US. Many warnings, concerns, and dangers have been documented, sited, and published. New features have expanded the capabilities of these appliances, from the days of just being able to pop corn, or warm a beverage. Join us this month to learn what’s new with the staple of the modern kitchen.

Come join us for an evening at one of Wheeling’s newer establishments, Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant.

A modern casual restaurant, a menu created with their hand crafted wines in mind. Start with visiting their Napa-style tasting room and shop.

Then we’ll head to the dining room where it will be your choice to order appetizers, dinner entrees, or just desserts to enjoy.

We’ll be conducting a "Yankee Swap" style gift exchange. So if you would like to participate,

bring an unopened bottle of wine ( approx. $10 ), wrapped to exchange. Place a tag on the bottle to identify the type of wine in the wrapping.

We’ll draw cards to establish the selection order to pick your new bottle of wine to take home.

RSVP - Would be helpful for the restaurants set up, but come if you happen to be able to join us!

Wishing you a Happy Holidays, Happy New Year !

Hope this note finds you well, and ready to make your packaging career advancements into the New Year. A very trying year it has been. Have spoke with many members of our Chicago Chapter who are looking for new opportunities. Our hope is the New Year will bring new and better opportunities to our fellow Chicago packaging members.

After failing to get arrangements set, we have decided to move our December holiday gathering for January 12, 2010. This will be the Wine and Cheese "Yankee Swap" that we had planned for December. Hope many of you can attend, especially now that we have removed it from the busy holiday period before the Christmas and New Year breaks.

Our chapter’s 2009 year. The year was eventful and had some good strong points worth remembering. I wish to thank the chapter’s friends ( and my new friends also ! ) that helped bring informative, interesting, and educational meetings, and tours for our chapter. They are:

Tim Bohrer - "Where is your resin coming from" presentation.

Rita Baranowski - Hoffer Plastics manufacturing tour.

Don Brooks and team - McCrone Associates’ presentation of Microanalysis & Microscopy.

Lisa Benoit - Waste Managements Recycle America Educational Center presentation.

Wynn Wiksell and Stan Kopecky - Food Safety Alliance for Packaging.

Additionally, wish to thank Lisa Baer, and Wil Benjamin - For our March Stimulus meeting, and its success to bring out over 50 attendees !

And the annual golf outing in July - Wil Benjamin chairman, also with a number of helpers that without, we could not have made this an annual success !

Thank you to the following: Robert Koterwski, Molly Lynn, Mary Slaga, Fred Sphor, Amy Schupback, Jennifer Biewer, Ericka Shapiama, Wendy Whelton, and others !

To our golf outing sponsors, who so graciously contributed to our chapter.

They are: Advance Packaging Technology Laboratories, Central Can Company, Imprint Enterprises Inc., Knight Packaging Group Inc., Morrison Container Handling Solutions, Murrihy Pallet, Pactiv, Parker Plastics Inc., Phoenix Container, Proteous Packaging, Schneider Electric / Elau Packaging Solutions, Sonoco, Stephen Gould Corporation, Transparent Container, TricorBraun, Tristar Machinery !

With this support, our chapter donated $5000 to the education fund of IoPP which is launch and supporting the Packaging Student Ameri-Star program. Note, our student winner also claimed awards in the World-Star awards program !

Remember, go to our website for new announcements, click on the blog link, and let us know what’s up ! Join us on our groups " Linked In" , Chicago Chapter of IoPP.

And last but not least, any members interested in joining our board, please contact me. We are in need of interest members that would like to continue the direction of what our chapter will be doing in the future. We need you now !