A professional engineer (student non-trade design engineering apprentice, Rolls-Royce, Aero Division), a university qualified polymer and industrial marketing specialist with 'hands on' experience of international business. Skilled in finding and developing new business opportunities over a wide spectrum of end user industries.

Joined the American Celanese Corporation in London during 1972 and left in 1990 to start his own business MARFORTEC^®. An organisation specialising in Business Development helping European and non-European companies develop or expand their business in Europe by identifying new business opportunities, finding customers, generating sales, obtaining specification approvals, providing local customer service, managing distribution and providing local office facilities.

The holder of three patents covering aerosol packaging and the author of ten papers on polymers and engineering applications.

A fellow of the UK Institute of Materials and a Member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

Dr MEL DRUIN     The USA Connection

A leader in plastics research and development for the past 35 years, with fourteen issued. US patents in chemicals, plastic films, engineering resins and composites, and the author of 35 papers and conference presentations in plastic materials and packaging.

His work in polymer development at Celanese was at the forefront of PET polymer commercialization for carbonated beverage bottles during the early 1980s. Dr. Druin was the principle inventor of Celgard Microporous films, now commercial with sales exceeding $100 MM, used for specialty medical devices and for high-energy battery systems. He was responsible for the basic R & D and scale-up to a semi-works operation for manufacturing Celgard for market and application development. He also invented and scaled-up Celanese’s manufacturing process for producing graphite fibers. The commercial business was subsequently sold to BASF for $165 million in 1984.

At Campbell Soup Company, Dr. Druin served as an Officer and Corporate Vice President responsible for the company’s worldwide packaging R & D organization. He developed the corporate packaging strategy and positioned Campbell as a leader in developing and commercializing new convenience packaging for microwavable food applications. He developed the first hot fill plastic bottles for V-8 Vegetable Juice, the dual ovenable plastic tray for Swanson frozen dinners, the first shelf stable retortable plastic soup bowl with an easy open lid, and numerous other plastic packages. He directed the development and conversion from three-piece steel food cans to self-manufacturing of two-piece cans at Campbell. Dr. Druin also directed the design and commercialization of Campbell’s first CPET plastic food tray operation. This facility was the largest scale CPET tray line in the world, producing 125 million dual ovenable trays for Campbell’s Swanson Frozen Food Division.

After leaving Campbell Soup, he started his own company PolyPlas Development, L.L.C. a contract plastics R & D company specializing in plastics packaging and advanced plastic materials.

He created the Center for Processing of Plastic Packaging at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT). The Center was the first development facility in the US to focus on the processing and manufacturing of plastic packaging and has a broad range of capabilities including extrusion, injection molding , co-extrusion, thermoforming and foaming of plastics.

Dr. Druin currently also serves as the Director of Development for the Polymer Processing Institute at NJIT.