Nine to be inducted into Plastics Hall of Fame

The Plastics Hall of Fame will welcome nine new members — eight men and one woman — when they are inducted during NPE 2015.

The new Hall of Famers are a diverse bunch, including the head of a major German injection press manufacturer, a top executive of a Canadian maker of pipe corrugating equipment, a trade association leader, two pioneers in polyolefin material, one man who developed polyethylene for blow molded plastic milk bottles, another man the inventor of the slurry polymerization process, a former president of the Society of Plastics Engineers, a global expert in structural foam molding technology and an academic leader who developed a new way to balance multi-cavity molds.

The Plastics Academy, working with the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc., announced the inductees. The new members are: John Beaumont, Terry Browitt, William Carteaux, Robert DeLong, Eugen Hehl, Edward Hunerberg, Manfred Lupke, Donald Norwood and Maureen Steinwall.

Steinwall, president and CEO of custom injection molder Steinwall Inc., becomes only the second woman inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame. The first was Stephanie Kwolek, the inventor of Kevlar, who died June 18.

The nine industry leaders will be inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame March 22 at a ceremony and dinner which kicks off NPE 2015.

“The Academy is very honored to introduce the Class of 2015, consisting of individuals from the various disciplines within plastics, and also representative of the global growth and development of our industry,” said Jay Gardiner, president of the Plastics Academy. “We are also looking forward to the new format for the Hall of Fame Induction Ceremonies at NPE 2015.”

The Plastics Hall of Fame is housed at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

Here is more information about the new Plastics Hall of Famers, in alphabetical order:

John Beaumont is president of Beaumont Technologies Inc. in Erie, Pa., and he was one of three founding faculty members of Penn State Erie's Plastics Technology program. He was the program chair from 1999 to 2012.

He earned a bachelor's degree in plastics technology, and a master's in plastics engineering, from UMass Lowell. He was technical manager at Moldflow Inc. before joining Penn State Erie in 1989.

He developed a device called the MeltFlipper, which rotates the melt to balance the flow through runner systems, and started Beaumont Technologies to make it.

Beaumont was nominated by John Ralston, operations manager at Beaumont Technologies. His nomination was supported by letters from eight former students and industry leaders such as John Bozelli and John Raybuck.

Beaumont holds seven patents with two more pending.

Terence J. Browitt was the 2001 president of SPE, and the second Canadian to hold that title after Ralph Noble back in 1970. Noble was named to the Plastics Hall of Fame at NPE 2009, after he was nominated by Browitt.

Browitt has been an SPE member since 1965, and a member of the Canadian Plastics Industry Association since 1996. He served on the CPIA board of directors from 2000 to 2009.

A native of England, Browitt earned a degree in physics from Queen Mary University in London. He came to Canada in 1962, when he was 21, to work for a company that manufactured wire and cable for North Electric Co. There, his research and development work ignited his love for the plastics industry.

Browitt founded Terinex International Ltd. in Quebec, a distributor of resins and color concentrates. He retired in 2009, but remains a director of the company.

Paul Browitt, president of Terinex, nominated his father for the Plastics Hall of Fame.

One supporting letter came from Pierre DuBois, retired CEO of CPIA. Another one came from Russell Broome, SPE's managing director.

As SPE president, Browitt encouraged the society to become more international.

William Carteaux became president and CEO of the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc., the industry's biggest trade association and voice of Washington, in 2005. He's a machinery guy at heart — Carteaux was a top official of international injection press manufacturer Demag Plastics Group, and before that, headed Autojectors Inc., a maker of vertical injection presses.

“To go from CEO of a multi-billion dollar global plastics equipment manufacturer to president and CEO of a not-for-profit trade association is no easy task, particularly in a climate where plastics is not a forgiving word to the public,” wrote Gardiner, who nominated Carteaux . Gardiner said Carteaux's management style has “brought renewed strength and vigor” to SPI.

A native of rural Indiana, he got a job at a car dealership, saved money and enrolled at Purdue University. He earned a bachelor's degree in 1984, and an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University in 1999. He started in plastics as a regional sales manager for Group Dekko International, spent several years at automotive molder Guardian Industries Corp. He returned to Group Dekko to join Autojectors.

SPI faced a major challenge with the 2009 NPE show, held in the middle of the Great Recession. Major exhibitors began pulling out, because of the lack of available cash. Carteaux scheduled trips to meet with machinery executives in Japan and Europe, creating a “stimulus package” of discounts, and the show was saved. SPI moved NPE to Orlando for the 2012 show.

Robert DeLong, a chemical engineer, is described in nomination papers as a major pioneer in blow molded dairy bottles, but someone who was “camouflaged” because most of his employers did not patent or publish technical information for fear of disclosure to competitors.

He supervised Celanese Corp.'s development of high density polyethylene milk bottle resin from 1963 to 1970. He understood early on that the Uniloy brand of blow molding machine, dominant in dairy bottles, required specific requirements for melt rheology to run efficiently. The resin, commercialized as A60-70R, held an 85 percent market share of the dairy bottle market for a number of years.

The key: DeLong convinced Celanese's resin plant to blend and pelletize on the same equipment for each lot, ensuring product consistency.

He was the first to recognize the effect of parison extrusion shear rate on melt fracture, and its adverse effects on the surface finish of the bottle. He also designed extrusion heads that could minimize or eliminate rough surfaces due to melt fracture.

At the Rainville company, DeLong developed the “bundling” of a total package of blow molding machinery specifications, part design, mold design, operator training and output guarantees.

Other innovations include work on developing the first gas phase polypropylene production in the United States and the injection blow molded PET bottles in the early 1970s.

“Bob was a ‘doer' as well as a chemical engineer,” said Don Peters, a blow molding expert and Plastics Hall of Fame member who nominated DeLong for the hall.

DeLong is vice president of Blasformen Consulting in Kingwood, Texas.

Eugen Hehl worked with his brother, Karl Hehl, to build Arburg GmbH & Co. KG into a major international force in injection molding machinery — all from their humble town of Lossburg in Germany's Black Forest.

Their father, Arthur Hehl, created a small company in 1923 to make surgical instruments. After World War II, the company began producing consumer goods such as hairclips and wire baskets. Then in 1950, Arburg began manufacturing camera flash units, but experienced insulation problems at the connection between the flash and the camera. The answer: Design a simple injection press to encapsulate the connector plugs.

In 1956, businessman Eugen and Karl, the engineer, started series production of the plastics machines, with 10 employees. In 1960, the company patented the Allrounder principle, which allows the press to achieve multiple working positions. Today Arburg employs about 2,300 people around the world, and management of the company has been passed on to a third generation of family owners.

Arburg generated 2013 sales of about 470 million euros ($650 million).

Karl Hehl died in 2010.

Eugen Hehl was nominated by Tim Womer, a screw designer who runs TM Womer & Associates LLC in Edinburg, Pa., and is a member of the Plastics Hall of Fame.

Edward Hunerberg is the guru of structural foam molding, a leading expert in what is a tiny niche of the plastics industry. Hunerberg's job as Uniloy Milacron's vice president of structural foam technology has taken him around the world.

His career began in the early days of structural foam, as an electrical engineer at the Springfield Cast Products division of Koehring Corp. He designed electrical controls for their concept foam machine. He held engineering management positions within the brand, known as Uniloy Springfield.

Throughout his career, Hunerberg listened to customers and designed in changes that would meet their specific needs and make lighter weight containers and improve efficiency, according to Dave Skala, group vice president at Uniloy Milacron Inc., who nominated him for the Plastics Hall of Fame. Uniloy Milacron is based in Tecumseh, Mich.

Some of Hunerberg's major contributions include sequential injection so that each part and mold can be set up individually, multiple nozzles and a modular platen allowing processors to configure injection mold filling, two-color molding and a gas valve to permit intermittent extrusion.

He received Milacron LLC's Neil Armstrong Award in 2008.

Brian Read, CEO of Horizon Plastics Inc., a major structural foam molder in Cobourg, Ontario, said Hunerberg is a “mainstay” in structural foam.

“I personally do not think that the structural foam business would have advanced to where it is today had Ed Hunerberg not been so keenly involved,” he said.

Hunerberg's nomination was supported by executives of several other structural foam molders, including DeKalb Molded Plastics Co., 20/20 Custom Molded Plastics Ltd., Cambro Manufacturing Co. Inc., and CBIS/Korfil.

Manfred Lupke, president and CEO of Corma Inc., is an expert in equipment for making corrugated plastic pipe.

The mechanical engineer came to Canada from Germany with his wife, Renate, and two young children in 1969. Four years later, the Lupkes and a colleague established Corma.

In its 41-year history, Corma has built more than 1,300 corrugators for customers in more than 95 countries. Lupke has registered 848 patents globally. They include: a vacuum forming system for corrugated pipe, air cooling of mold blocks, Super Cooling, double-layer in-line coupling and a mold block return system, mold block inserts and a compact die for large-diameter pipe.

Lupke, 75, is still a driving force of the company, according to his son, Stefan Lupke, executive vice president of Corma in Concord, Ontario. His father has applied for five new patents in 2014.

The Canadian Plastics Industry Association named Lupke Leader of the Year in 2007. He received the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.

Befitting a man with hundreds of patents, Lupke has been a staunch defender of intellectual property rights. Corma has launched some high-profile patent-infringement lawsuits against Chinese competitors.

Don Norwood made a groundbreaking invention in 1959: The slurry loop reactor, used for the polymerization of ethylene and propylene. It replaced the conventional pot-type reactor vessels. The first commercial polyethylene loop reactor came on stream in Houston in 1961.

The loop reactor was used for the slurry (particle form) polymerization process to linear polyethylenes, for HDPE and linear low density PE. Norwood also invented the extension of a similar loop reactor PE process to produce crystalline PP in the first “bulk” polymerization.

About half of all HDPE and PP worldwide are made using Norwood's early inventions, according to the two men who nominated him for the Plastics Hall of Fame: Don Peters, retired principal engineer for blow molding at Chevron Phillips Chemical Co., and Max McDaniel, catalysis scientist at Chevron Phillips.

They said about 250 loop reactors are in operation today, using many types of catalysts, such as chromium, Ziegler and metallocence, to make PE for a wide range of uses.

“His whole reactor design was ingenious for its raw simplicity, durability and high efficiency,” the nominators wrote.

An infantryman in World War II, Norwood participated in the invasion of the Philippines and the occupation of Japan. He earned a chemical engineering degree after the war, and worked for four years on the separation of uranium isotopes in Oak Ridge, Tenn. He joined Phillips Petroleum Co. in 1956 in the research department.

From 1970 through 1986, Norwood was supervisor of Phillips PE and PP pilot plants. He worked as a full-time consultant for the company until 1996.

Maureen Steinwall, president and CEO of Steinwall Inc., is one of the small group of women who own plastics companies. She has become a well-known advocate for employee training and motivation, devoting years of work, and education, into the subject.

Steinwall's Ph.D. dissertation was called “Multimedia Training of Optimism Competencies.”

One innovation: mounting iPads on each press running PowerPoint presentations showing each work instructions for every specific molding job. The molder in Coon Rapids, Minn., also uses videos to train new employees.

Steinwall has long been active in SPI, serving on the national board since 1996. In the 1990s, she helped SPI develop the Orient Me program. Currently, she serves on the board of directors, the financial administration and membership committee and the processor council.

Steinwall was nominated by SPI CEO Carteaux and Daniele Fresca, marketing director of IQMS Inc.

Steinwall, with some accounting advice. She became vice president of the molder in 1983, then president two years later. She bought the company from her father in 1987.

She currently serves on the boards of SPI, two companies and one hospital foundation.

Steinwall Inc. won the Plastics News Processor of the Year Award in 2012.