Lori Anderson
Senior Director - Economic & International Trade Affairs
Society of the Plastics Industry Inc.

Anderson

Lori Anderson is the primary staff person for statistics and international trade issues at the Washington-based Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. (www.socplas.org).

She is staff director for SPI´s Global Business Council and directs the association’s Committee on Equipment Statistics. She also coordinates the SPI Economic Report (www.plasticsnews.com/spier), a regularly updated compendium of data and analysis of the U.S. plastics industry´s economic impact. This report includes in-depth data on all major plastics processing sectors, as well as compounding, mold making, and international plastics product trade patterns.

Before joining SPI more than a decade ago, the North Dakota native was a legislative aide on Capitol Hill, and a public school teacher. Anderson has a bachelor of science degree in education, and has a master´s degree in public policy from the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs.





Peter Anderson
President
RecycleWorlds Consulting Corp.

Anderson

Peter Anderson is president of Madison, Wis.-based RecycleWorlds Consulting Corp. (www.recycleworlds.org), executive director of the Center for a Competitive Waste Industry (www.competitivewaste.org), and project director for the Plastic Redesign Project (www.plasticredesign.org), a multistate coalition of government agencies and associations dedicated to strengthening the economics of local plastics recycling programs through voluntary public-private partnerships.

He also is a senior lecturer at the University of Wisconsin's Department of Applied Economics on recycling systems, and chairperson of the National Recycling Coalition's Landfill Subcommittee.

Previously, Anderson operated a buyback and processing center. He received his bachelor of science degree in economics from Cornell University and his master's degree in solid waste planning and industrial organization of the solid waste industry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jack Avery
Manager - Operational Assets
GE Plastics

Avery

Jack Avery has worked at GE Plastics (www.geplastics.com) for 30 years in a variety of areas, including manufacturing, research and development, quality control, marketing and technology. He has been active in conversion process technology, including structural foam, blow molding, extrusion, multiprocess technology and gas-assist injection molding. As manager of operational assets, Avery currently works with conversion process equipment manufacturers on advanced development programs in GE Plastics' Polymer Processing Development Center in Pittsfield, Mass.

Avery -- who earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry from Bloomsburg State College and a master's degree in organic chemistry at John Carroll University in Cleveland -- is chairman of the Plastics Molders and Manufacturers Association of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. He also has been very active in the Society of Plastics Industry's Structural Plastics Division.

He wrote "Injection Molding Alternatives, a Guide for Designers and Product Engineers," published in 1998 by Hanser, and edited "Gas-Assist Injection Molding, Principles and Practice," published May 2001 by Hanser. He has made numerous conference presentations on process technology and has organized and chaired technical sessions at conferences worldwide.

Pierre Ferrari
Chair
Businesses & Environmentalists Allied for Recycling

Ferrari

Pierre Ferrari brings diverse experience to his current challenge as chair of Businesses & Environmentalists Allied for Recycling, an unusual coalition of businesses, recyclers, environmentalists and other stakeholders that wants to double the U.S. beverage-container recycling rate to 80 percent. BEAR (www.globalgreen.org/BEAR), a program of Global Green USA, is the American arm of former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev's Green Cross International environmental group. The group is in the midst of an ambitious project that aims to identify strategies to increase beverage container recycling, based on a value-chain analysis that documents the costs and benefits of alternative recovery programs.

With a master's degree in economics from The University of Cambridge in England, and an MBA from Harvard Business School, the Atlanta-based Ferrari previously worked for a wine importer and a sports marketing agency before becoming senior vice president of marketing for Coca-Cola USA. Since the mid-1990s he has focused his energies on a variety of social issues, ranging from the environment to international relief and development, support for the arts, and what he describes as conscientious commerce (as a director of both Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. and the Small Enterprise Assistance Funds).





Peter Foss
President
GE Polymerland Inc.

Foss

Peter Foss is president of GE Polymerland Inc. (www.gepolymerland.com), a Huntersville, N.C.-based plastics distributor that represents GE Plastics, Ticona, AtoFina, Honeywell and other engineered resin manufacturers. Polymerland expects to conduct some $3 billion in online plastics-related transactions in 2001.

Foss joined GE in 1979 as a marketing programs specialist for GE's Lexan-brand polycarbonate resins, and held a number of positions in resin sales and marketing management, including region sales manager positions in New York and Dallas. He then moved to sales and marketing management positions with Lexan and GE's Structured Products business. Foss also served as general manager of marketing for GE Superabrasives, and as manager of GE Plastics Mexico. He was general manager of GE Plastics' Western business region prior to moving to Polymerland in 1997.
He is a graduate of Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, Boston, where he earned a bachelor's degree in chemistry. GE Polymerland is a wholly owned subsidiary of General Electric Corp.





Ben R. Jordan
Environmental Manager
Coca-Cola North America

Jordan

As environmental manager for Coca-Cola North America, Ben Jordan provides focus to the beverage giant's environmental program in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. His role spans the external and operational components of Coke's environmental activities, working both within the Coca-Cola bottler system and with outside organizations to drive overall environmental progress.

He first joined Coca-Cola Co. (www.cocacola.com) in 1996 as environmental communications manager in the global environmental assurance department. In that capacity, he managed environmental training programs and technical environmental communications to the field worldwide. Before taking his current post, he was manager of corporate environmental affairs. As such, he focused on the external affairs component of Coca-Cola's environmental program, working with Coke's partners, government groups and others to better integrate environmental activities across the business.

As part of Coca-Cola Co.'s involvement with the Global Environmental Management Initiative, Jordan co-chairs an effort focused on measuring and communicating the value of environmental initiatives within corporations. He also serves as Coke's point of contact for CERES, the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies, and a number of other organizations. Jordan has a master of engineering degree in civil and environmental engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also received a bachelor of science degree in environmental engineering science.





David Jukes
Senior Vice President - Global Commercial Organization
Omnexus

Jukes

David Jukes has a career in the plastics industry spanning 24 years and four continents.

Prior to joining Omnexus (www.omnexus.com), he was the commercial director and vice president of corporate development for Ellis & Everard plc, the world's fourth-largest chemical distributor, and was the architect of its global polymers business. He also developed and deployed Ellis & Everard's e-business strategy.

He joined Omnexus in Atlanta in September 2000, and oversees all the company's sales, marketing and commercial activities, including its recent launch in Europe.
Born in Liverpool, England, Jukes earlier in his career spent three years in Australia as a part-time plastics executive and part-time professional rugby player, and also worked in Hong Kong, selling into Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea. Before joining Ellis & Everard, he was managing director of Victor International Plastics Ltd., a British compounder and concentrate manufacturer with plants across Europe that today is owned by PolyOne Corp.

Jukes completed a two-year condensed master's degree in business administration for working executives at the London Business School.





Huston Keith
Principal
Keymark Associates

Keith

Huston Keith, principal of Marietta, Ga.-based consultant Keymark Associates, has 21 years of market research and product development experience working at Amoco Foam Products Co., General Electric Co., Holiday Inns and consulting for Fortune 100 companies.

Keith, who earned an MBA from the University of Tennessee, has directed more than 200 industrial and consumer market studies in packaging, plastics, food, consumer durables, construction products, aircraft, hotels, travel and other industries.

Keymark Associates (www.keymark.org) consults extensively with major chemical firms and converters in flexible and rigid packaging, with the aim of helping such companies identify and develop new products, businesses and markets.

M. Barr Klaus
Vice President - Technology
Ferromatik Milacron North America

Klaus

Barr Klaus has spent his entire, 33-year professional career with the Plastic Technologies Group of Milacron Inc. (www.milacron.com). He oversees technology matters related to all of the firm's injection machinery -- electric and hydraulic presses alike. Klaus has held various technical and management roles with the Batavia, Ohio-based machinery maker, in injection molding, blow molding, and single- and twin-screw extrusion, as well as corporate assignments in laser processing machinery and long-range planning.

In his current role, Klaus' duties include process and controls development, technical services, product development, and responsibility for Milacron's new energy resource center in Cincinnati. The holder of numerous patents for electric injection molding technology, he graduated from Purdue University with bachelor's degrees in chemistry and industrial management, and also earned an MBA from Cincinnati's Xavier University.

Frank Mechura
Chairman
Constar Inc.

Mechura

Frank Mechura has a 34-year tenure with Philadelphia-based Crown Cork & Seal Inc. and its predecessor company Continental Can. He currently wears several hats, serving as executive vice president of Crown Cork, as well as president of its Americas Division and chairman of its Constar Inc. plastic bottle-making unit. He also is vice chairman of NAPCOR, the National Association of PET Container Resources, a Charlotte, N.C.-based trade association (www.napcor.com) whose mission is to promote the use of PET packaging and to facilitate recycling of the material.

Crown Cork & Seal (www.crowncork.com) is a leading supplier of packaging products to consumer marketing companies around the world, making a wide range of metal cans and plastic containers for the food, beverage, personal care, industrial and household markets. In 2000, the company reported net sales of $7.3 billion from 223 plants in 50 countries. Plastics News estimates placed Constar's North American blow-molded plastic bottle sales at $660 million last year, ranking it No. 3 on the continent. Constar operates 16 plants in North America, employing 1,900.

Mechura is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received his MBA from the Harvard Business School.





James Mosberg
Vice President - Strategic Accounts
ChemConnect Inc.

Mosberg

Jamie Mosberg brought 17 years of plastics industry experience to ChemConnect Inc. (www.chemconnect.com) when he joined the company in January 2000 as its vice president of plastics sales. In his current position, the Philadelphia-based Mosberg leads a group of global account directors in North America to develop e-commerce solutions for large polymer producers, additives suppliers, distributors, compounders and plastics processors.

He began his career in 1984 in the finance department at Borg-Warner Chemicals in Parkersburg, W.Va. He later became financial manager of B-W's Plastic Service Centers business unit, and later a sales representative in that organization. In 1988 he helped start Harbor City Plastics in Abingdon, Md., and served as president of that small injection molder until 1990, when he left to become marketing manager of Epsilon Products Co., a polypropylene resin maker in Marcus Hook, Pa. Mosberg spent a decade at Epsilon, serving also as its director of product management and then vice president of business development.

He has a bachelor's degree in economics from Western Maryland College, and a master's in accounting from Virginia Tech.





Norbert J. Ore
Group Director - Strategic Sourcing & Procurement,
Georgia-Pacific Corp., and
Chair, National Assn. of Purchasing Management's
Manufacturing Business Survey Committee

Ore

Norbert Ore joined Georgia-Pacific Corp. (www.gp.com) earlier this year, with responsibility for sourcing raw materials, energy and services, and for reshaping the Atlanta firm's purchasing organization to significantly reduce supply-chain costs. G-P is a $22 billion, 85,000-employee manufacturer of paper, packaging, pulp, tissue, building products and related chemicals.

Ore has held various corporate and divisional responsibilities with companies in these fields. He began as a purchasing manager at packaging giant Sonoco Products Co. in Hartsville, S.C., in 1976, and served for 22 years before leaving in 1998 to join Chesapeake Corp., a Richmond, Va.-based paperboard and speciality plastics packaging supplier, as its purchasing director. His involvement in the plastics industry has included injection molding, films, resins and fabrications, and G-P also currently injection molds and thermoforms some plastic products.

Ore is actively involved in the National Association of Purchasing Management (www.napm.org), the American Arbitration Association and the Council for Logistics Management. Since 1996 he has chaired NAPM's Manufacturing Business Survey Committee and been responsible for compiling, writing, and releasing the NAPM Report on Business, a leading indicator of the economy. He earned a bachelor of business administration degree at Marshall University in West Virginia, and did graduate study in business University of Utah.

Dr. J. Winston Porter
President
Waste Policy Center

Porter

Consultant Win Porter is president of the Waste Policy Center in Leesburg, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. The WPC (www.winporter.com) is a private research and consulting organization that deals with environmental management and policy issues related to both governmental and business organizations.

From 1985-89, Porter was the assistant administrator for Solid Waste and Emergency Response at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In this position, he was the national program manager for the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and Superfund programs. Porter's EPA responsibilities included administration of a budget of approximately $2 billion per year, direction of major regulatory development and enforcement programs, responsibility for work at over 800 Superfund sites, and testimony at some 50 Congressional hearings. At EPA, he helped to establish a national goal for recycling 25 percent of the country's municipal solid wastes, which was reached in 1995.

Earlier, Porter was with the Bechtel engineering and construction organization, where he managed the environmental department, and later served as a vice president of several Bechtel affiliates in the Middle East.

He received his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. in the same field from the University of California at Berkeley.

Joseph Pryweller
Senior Reporter
Plastics News

Pryweller

Joe Pryweller, who spent his first three years with Plastics News as its Detroit-based reporter, was named senior reporter in December 1999 and relocated to the Akron office. He continues to cover the mold-making industry while handling broader reporting assigments, including electronic commerce and special projects. Pryweller holds a bachelor's degree in communications/business from Michigan State University, and earned a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri. His journalism experience includes stints as a business and entertainment reporter at the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., and as a senior editor and writer for the American Society of Interior Designers in Washington.





Richard Sturgis
Director - Southern Region
Society of the Plastics Industry Inc.

Sturgis

Rick Sturgis is a 19-year plastics industry veteran. In 1996, when the Washington, D.C.-based Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. established its southern regional headquarters in Greenville, S.C., Sturgis joined SPI (www.plasticsindustry.org) and became its director of southern operations there. SPI South serves the plastics industry in 13 southern states.

Sturgis has played a leading role in promoting the trade group's work-force development and training efforts, including its satellite-based Plastics Learning Network (www.plasticslearning.org). SPI is a national trade association for the plastic industry with 1,600 member companies from the processing, machinery and raw material community.

After graduating from Clemson University in 1982, Sturgis joined the Zellerbach division of Mead Corp. and served in both sales and sales management roles in flexible packaging until 1991. He then joined the Williamson Companies of Greenville, S.C., as manager of flexible packaging for its textile packaging operation.





Taku Tawarada
Marketing & Sales Manager
Ube Machinery Inc.

Tawarada

Taku Tawarada is marketing and sales manager for Ube Machinery Inc. (www.ubemachinery.com), the Ann Arbor, Mich.-based manufacturer and distributor of injection molding, extrusion press and die casting machines. Tawarada plans, budgets and executes all marketing initiatives for, and oversees the sales of, Ube injection molding machines. In this position he oversaw the 1998 launch of the UN Series, Ube's all-electric injection molding machines.

Prior to this position, Tawarada worked for parent company Ube Industries Ltd. (www.ube-ind.co.jp) in Tokyo, Japan. He began his career as a part of Ube Industries Ltd.'s "America Group," working in support of the firm's North American initiatives. He later oversaw the marketing of injection molding and die casting machines throughout Southeast Asia for Ube Industries Ltd. He has been with Ube since 1987.

Tawarada has an MBA from the University of Florida and a BA in economic law from Yokohama National University. A native of Japan, he has spent a third of his life in the United States, including six years in New York City as a child.





Steve Toloken
Reporter
Plastics News

Toloken

Steve Toloken, who joined Plastics News in January 1997 at Crain's office in Washington, D.C., covers matters related to legislation, recycling, trade, politics, industry associations, and the medical sector. A 1991 journalism graduate of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, he later that year served as a reporter intern in Washington for the Chicago Tribune.

Toloken then returned to Illinois, where he worked for two and a half years as a correspondent for the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights and for a suburban bureau of the Chicago Tribune. He moved back to the East Coast to be a staff reporter for the Daily Press in Newport News, Va., and then assistant editor of two newsletters in Washington covering the telecommunications industry.

Urquhart

Michael Urquhart
Vice President - Service & Sales
Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd.

Mike Urquhart has served in many capacities during his 21 years with the Bolton, Ontario-based machinery and mold maker Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd. He has been vice president of mold operations, of machine operations, and now of service and sales.

Urquhart studied in Ontario, Canada, receiving his mechanical engineering degree from the University of Waterloo and his MBA from York University. He then worked for three years at Montreal's Domtar Inc., a wood products and packaging company, before joining Husky in 1980.

Husky (www.husky.ca) is a publicly traded Canadian company with sales of approximately US$700 million annually. The company produces plastic injection molding machines, hot runners, PET bottle preform molds, robots and product handling equipment, in addition to complete turnkey factories, for the global market. Husky has customers in more than 100 countries.

VanHoeck

Steven VanHoeck
Vice President
Alliance Gas Systems Inc.

Steven VanHoeck is vice president and a founding principal of Alliance Gas Systems Inc. (www.gasassist.com), a leading supplier of gas-assist and water-assist molding technology in North America, based in Chesterfield Township, Mich. In addition to working more than 33 years in the plastics industry, he has been active in the field of gas-assisted injection molding since 1988. He now dedicates his activities to product design and process implementation of gas injection technology in North and South America, to molders, designers, tool builders and original equipment manufacturers.

Following formal education at Wayne State University in Detroit, VanHoeck entered the plastics industry in thermoforming in 1968. He then became involved in process and product development for thermoformed and stamped plastics; and injection molding and finishing services as manager of estimating and product/cost development at Detroit Plastic Molding from 1979-90. He got involved full-time with gas-assist technology activity in 1993 with Gain Technologies Inc.

VanHoeck was a driving force to launch Alliance Gas Systems in 1997, which offers equipment, product and process development for gas-assist and water-assist injection molding technology.

Raymond Veno
Vice President - Engineering & Continuous Improvement
Precise Technology Inc.

Veno

In his current role at Precise Technology Inc., Ray Veno oversees corporate engineering groups in Pittsburgh; Holden, Mass.; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Sevenhausen, The Netherlands. Precise (www.precisetech.com) operates 250 injection molding presses at 12 plants, and serves the packaging, healthcare and consumer/industrial markets.

Previously, Veno was a consultant engineer and manager of plastics technology and development for Digital Equipment Corp. His team at Digital was responsible for all plastic components and materials, as well as research and development functions involving plastics processes, advanced EMI/RFI shielding, electrostatic discharge, and thermal transfer materials.

He previously worked at Nypro Inc., Cabot Corp. and ARCO. A past chairman of the Society of Plastic Engineers' injection molding division, Veno continues to serve on the advisory board to the Lowell Engineering Department at the University of Massachusetts.

He was project manager charged with optimizing production flow and efficiency at Precise's plant in Bridgeport, N.J. The highly automated plant performs high-volume injection molding and in-mold labeling dedicated to producing the domestic requirements for Procter & Gamble Co.'s Baby Wipes containers.