Kickstart: Forming a winning career

Being part of a project to update the refrigerator — replacing the metal inner liner with thermoformed plastic in the 1970s — is a pretty outstanding career highlight for most people.

But it was just the start for Donald Hylton. He went on to help develop thermoformable polypropylene, then became a pioneer in the development of co-extruded multilayer food packaging.

"Each of Don Hylton's achievements is more impressive than the last," Thermoforming Division Chair Paul Uphaus said in a Dec. 9 announcement that Hylton has been named 2025 SPE Thermoformer of the Year.

He will receive the award in May 2025 during the SPE Thermoforming Conference in Atlanta. Hylton previously received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the division.

Hylton was a recent graduate of Kentucky State University and studying at the University of Louisville when he joined General Electric's Plastics Application Center. His work to develop testing methods for plastics was key to the rapid development of a thermoformed inner door liner for GE refrigerators made at nearby Appliance Park.

Later, at ExxonMobil, he was assigned to develop a thermoformable PP. In food packaging he developed the first thermoformed self-stable plastic food packaging while at Millikin Co. he developed the first clear PP for food packaging. Both are standard on grocery store shelves now. He is also in the chemistry department at Clark Atlanta University.

I know most of us buy chocolate at Christmas, but Mondelez International may be preparing for the biggest cocoa haul of all as Bloomberg reports the maker of Oreo cookies may be buying Hershey Co.

Neither company is commenting on the record — beyond a boilerplate statement of not commenting on "market rumors and speculation" — but the joint company would be a global candy juggernaut.

Hershey, obviously, has chocolates sold under its own name as well as KitKats, Reese's, Jolly Ranchers and SkinnyPop Popcorn. Mondelez also has the Cadbury, Chips Ahoy, Ritz Crackers, Wheat Thins and Sour Patch brands in addition to others.

Neither company has much direct packaging production, although Mondelez has been an investor in chemical recycling projects and a vocal member of the Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty.

There's growing interest and investments in bioplastics production, but an update about the global market shows that there's still quite a gap between production capacity and the use of bio-based polymers.

Beatriz Santos from our sister paper Sustainble Plastics writes that global bioplastics production increased to 1.44 million metric tons in 2024, according to a new report unveiled at the 2024 European Bioplastics Conference in Berlin. That's up from 1.37 million tonnes in 2023.

Production capacity, however, sits at 2.47 million tonnes currently, up from 2.18 million tonnes a year ago.