Kickstart: Epsilyte's Crocker wins first Carteaux award

Brad Crocker, the CEO of materials maker Epsilyte LLC, has been awarded the inaugural William R. Carteaux Leadership Award from the Plastics Industry Association.

Carteaux led the association from 2005 until he passed away from leukemia in December 2018. In late 2020, the group created the award in Carteaux's honor to recognize an industry executive who has worked for the "betterment of the plastics industry."

Crocker currently leads Epsilyte, based in The Woodlands, Texas, and has a long career in the industry, working as president and CEO at Americas Styrenics LLC from 2012 to 2020 and management and sales roles in the chemical and paper industries before that.

Crocker was recognized May 2 at the Plastics Hall of Fame awards gala in Chicago, and in an announcement, the association said Carteaux's widow, Daniele Fresca Carteaux, talked about the qualities her husband stood for and that Crocker has exemplified in his career.

The award was originally planned to be presented at the NPE2021 trade show, but it was rescheduled after COVID forced the cancellation of that event.

The website 3Dprinting.com believes that boats made with additive manufacturing "are the future, we are pretty sure of that."

They're also pretty sure that recycled plastic has a future in some of that work.

The site recently highlighted a startup Dutch boat maker, Drifty, and an Amsterdam 3D printing company, HB3D, that are working to develop small electric catamarans made from 100 percent recycled PET bottles, for use on Amersterdam's famed canals.

The company says the robotically printed boats have an advantage over traditional molding processes — custom tags used for logistics or tracing at end-of-life can be easily manufactured into individual boats or parts.

HB3D does other work in recycled plastic. It's making a 5-meter-long 3D printed barge it says is inspired by the Dutch 'Aak' boat shape.

That vessel, too, has some reuse options — the company says the barge is also 100 percent recyclable at the end of its life.

It's not a great start of the year for European plastics machinery makers.

The German machinery association VDMA reported this week that orders for plastics and rubber machinery in the first quarter plummeted 27 percent compared to the prior year, while overall sales were up only 3 percent.

As Catherine Kavanaugh noted in our coverage, whether it's because of supply chain and materials uncertainty from COVID-19, the war in Ukraine or other factors, VDMA is scaling back its projection for 2022.

It had estimated 5-10 percent growth this year for plastics and rubber equipment sales, but now it sees something closer to sideways movement or very modest growth.

Our story noted that things looked better, if still uncertain, for the Italian plastics machinery sector.

The trade group Amaplast said Italian plastics and rubber machinery makers reported 28 percent year-on-year demand increase in the first quarter, and another 6-7 percent for the second quarter.

But the association also said forecasting the immediate future is tough, whether it's because of COVID-19-related closures from Chinese manufacturing plants or the Ukrainian conflict or something else.

It's an "exceedingly complicated and also paradoxical situation," the Italian group said.