“They were selling at a significant price premium and they were starting to make money. By the time 1996 rolled around, when I joined, that part of the business was starting to take off. In fact, it had a pretty significant growth rate,” Steve said. But Normar wasn’t out of the water yet. GE’s headquarters in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, still remained to be convinced the new revenue streams would remain viable over the long term.
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Solid vision
1 46 O u r P e op l e – O u r H i s t o r y
“I don’t think head office had necessarily embraced what was going on in Cobourg, but the roots had been set. By the time I got here, the plant was still in some trouble,” Steve said. “But there were people before me that had a solid vision about what they could do with the plant.” Steve credits former plant manager Joe Bleull with championing the new efforts, and Tom Bouchard who, with nearly 20 years of service at GE Plastics, was able to make good use of his connections in Pittsfield to sell the plant’s vision. This all led to Nani Beccalli-Falco’s historic visit. “Nani sponsored us for a great deal of investment. He was a very influential person. From 1996 until 1999 we gained head office recognition that this was a moneymaking venture just waiting to happen. I just can’t say enough about the way the team in Cobourg rallied behind the effort,” Steve said. In 1997-1998 the entire polycarbonate portfolio – GE’s Lexan line – was added to Cobourg’s product line-up. Then crystalline polymers were added, followed by the Valox, Xenoy and Xylex portfolios, with the new lines representing hundreds of new grades of plastic. But with each new material also came new challenges. Each polymer had its own extrusion technology affecting the type of equipment used, the types of screws in the extruders, temperature profiles and the overall mode of operation. “We had to go through a very sharp learning curve,” Steve said. “The team did an amazing job during those years.”