Reifenhäuser, ‘global spokesperson' for plastics, joins Hall of Fame

German machinery executive Ulrich Reifenhäuser, who joins the Plastics Hall of Fame this year, grew up with plastics at the dinner table.

His father, Hans, was the second generation running extrusion supplier Reifenhäuser GmbH & Co. KG Maschinenfabrik, and both the business and his father were a strong presence.

"Reifenhäuser was a family-owned company, and my father was the big and strong guy," he said. "Being his kid, he always brought the company into the family. I met with customers, and I met with employees who would sit at the dinner table."

So it's perhaps natural that Reifenhäuser, who has been managing director of the firm since 1992, would gravitate to the family firm. Both men are also in the Hall of Fame. Hans was inducted posthumously in 2014.

But Ulrich, the third generation in management in Reifenhäuser, has charted his own course.

He's probably the most prominent public face of the German plastics machinery industry, a key factor in his selection to the Hall.

Since 2004, Reifenhäuser has been chairman of the exhibitor advisory board of Germany's K show, the globe's most prominent plastics trade show.

Similarly, since 2009, he's had multiple terms as board chairman or vice chair of the plastics and rubber machinery group within the prominent German trade association VDMA.

"Ulrich has one huge quality that almost makes him unique in our industry: He's a real global spokesperson for plastics machinery," said Gunther Hoyt, a longtime machinery executive who nominated Reifenhäuser to the Hall of Fame.

Reifenhäuser has been chairman for the past six K shows. The fair happens every three years in Düsseldorf, and for every edition, the board of industry executives and show management elect one of their own to the voluntary position of head of the show.

K 2022 will be Reifenhäuser's seventh time. Before he took on the role, the job typically changed hands every one or two shows.

He said he sees his role as chairman of the fair, which claims attendance of more than 200,000 visitors from around the world over eight days, as creating a buying opportunity and a place to focus on common goals and challenges in the industry.

"Despite the day-to-day business when we fight as competitors and we fight for the single order, there is a clear understanding from my side, there is one strong wish and one strong target, to maintain the importance of plastics and support plastics," Reifenhäuser said.

For the upcoming K 2022, Reifenhäuser said he feels there's extra pressure on industry to present viable technology to address the waste, recycling and environmental challenges facing the industry.

"At K 2022, the circular economy will be the subject," he said, shifting his tone for emphasis. "It's not the blah, blah, blah. We have to come up with some real technology solutions. It really has to be something that you can invest in."

His firm, for example, is working on new extrusion technology to recycle films that are not considered recyclable now, Reifenhäuser said.

"We have a challenge, and we have to organize," he said. "I think the plastics industry as a whole has to take it very, very seriously."

For most of his nearly four decades in the industry, he said, plastics firms were largely only asked to make their products perform better or be cheaper, and that drove growth.

"For 40 years, we just looked for the best solutions, and we were better, cheaper, and that was why plastics took this enormous path of success," Reifenhäuser said. "But nobody asked us for recycling solutions. Now suddenly, we have a problem."

The risks are substantial, he said. If the industry can't support viable solutions, then it risks giving up growth opportunities and society may move to different solutions in packaging where it relies on plastics now, he said.

"If we don't find a solution, plastics will lose chances for further growth," he said. "They will forbid it and say, 'Come on, forget about plastic and take paper again, or take glass or take cans or whatever.'"

He said the industry has a positive argument it can make to society, that plastics has a vital role to play in fighting climate change because it often has a lower carbon footprint than competing materials and it is an enabling technology for innovations like electric vehicles.

But it has to clear up the waste and environmental challenges to "bring plastic back on the stage" and be fully seen as a key part in solving climate change, he said.

"At the very end, it's the CO2 problem that is the much more serious problem," he said. "There is no solution to the CO2 problem without plastics."

It's quite a different manufacturing world from the one Reifenhäuser started in, when he joined the company in 1986 as controller.

He had an MBA from the University of Cologne and had worked briefly in the family firm and as financial controller in a unit in German steelmaker Krupp Industrietechnik, before returning to Reifenhäuser for good.

In 1992, he became managing director of the firm, a title he holds today.

The company's growth continued, with sales rising fourfold to more than 600 million euros ($722.9 million) and 1,600 employees worldwide.

The firm grew to become, according to information from the Hall of Fame, a leader in extrusion technology around blown film and nonwoven materials.

He said the company's success came partly from focusing on the right technologies and knowing when to move away from others.

"In the history of our company, we concentrated on new technologies and we cut old technologies," he said. "If you are not 100 percent intensive in the work, then suddenly the competition is in front of you."

Reifenhäuser thinks it's been an advantage for the company to be family-owned and to have the family be dedicated and take a longer-term view. His sister Irene Reifenhäuser Karnath is board chair and brother Bernd Reifenhäuser is CEO.

As part of that, he said, the company works to keep a focus on technology development and on the end products its machines are used for.

For example, one of the company's larger markets is equipment to make films for diapers. They don't sell machines directly to diaper makers like Procter & Gamble and its Pampers brand but to the supply chain for those global companies.

"They are the biggest customers of our customers," he said. "We are machine makers who sell to big companies who then have 10 or 12 of these giant machines. They are very important for the supply of spunbond [materials] they use in the diapers."

The company's technology development keys on the end product needs, like manufacturing increasingly thinner films that maintain the same strength and ease of manufacturing.

"Our clear concentration was and is on end products," he said. "That's why we have this big R&D center. Yes, we develop technologies, but we only develop them to have technique for perfect products."

Reifenhäuser, however, is by his own admission not a technologist.

He did start early on the machinery side, first working at age 16 on an extrusion production line at the family firm, where he took the evening shift "because the money was better."

But he gravitated to the financial side early in his career, and then branched into sales. He particularly liked international sales and the entrepreneurs he would meet and build friendships with around the world as the industry globalized, whether that was Europe, the Americas, Asia or Africa.

"To build friendships with people you normally wouldn't get in contact with, this is fun," said Reifenhäuser, who is also the company's chief sales officer. "It really enriches my life and gives me new inputs and new ideas on what I can do better in the time to come."

One of the things he said he particularly likes doing for the time to come is mentoring younger colleagues.

He said he wants to pass on to others the importance of balancing a serious approach to their careers with fun. In his career, he said, one of the most important qualities he's found is willpower.

"You have to have a strong will. Whatever you want to do, just do it in a very strong, strong manner," he said.

But he also said he believes it is important to bring a sense of fun to the job.

"The most important thing is that you do it right, do it with a strong will and have fun," he said. "If you don't enter in the morning in the business or the factory or wherever it is, if you don't have a smile, then forget it. I always had fun, and I always talked to my guys and said we have to laugh once in a while."