John Farber, founder of ICC Industries and Primex Plastics Corp., died earlier this year at age 98.
Farber died Feb. 26 at his home in Manhattan. He was born in Romania in 1925 and married May Kleyman in 1953. Both Farber and his wife were from the Romanian city of Timisoara.
After completing his education, Farber joined his father-in-law, Leslie Kleyman, who had founded an export-import company in Romania. Farber then began trading chemicals that were raw materials for paints, relying on his contacts in Europe and his multilingual capabilities.
In the early 1950s, Farber moved to the U.S. and founded ICC Trading Inc., a global plastics and chemicals trader. Farber became interested in manufacturing and in 1965 founded Primex Plastics Corp. in a former garage in Englewood, N.J.
Over the next 60 years, Primex grew to include five U.S.-based sheet extrusion plants, two color and compounding facilities, and one design and fabrication unit. Primex also has operated a sheet facility in the United Kingdom for 25 years.
In 1975, ICC acquired Dover Chemical Corp. Farber personally continued to sell Dover Chemical's products internationally throughout his life. In the late 1990s, as the Romanian government sought to privatize its industries, ICC bought the former Farber paint factory, now known as Azur SA. In the early 2000s, Konsyl Pharmaceuticals was added to ICC. These are the companies that today comprise ICC.
Company officials said Farber had a close bond with the family of businesses and remained devoted to every person associated with ICC. "He took great pride in the accomplishments of the employees, as they were all important to him," they added.
Blaise Sarcone has been appointed president and CEO of ICC to continue the firm's vision of innovation, growth and sustainability, officials said.