June 29, 2023

In Memory of John Turnour

We are deeply saddened by the recent unexpected passing of John E. Turnour.

John has been a key part of our US Team since 2008, in his multiple roles ranging from sales and continuing through being REPI LLC’s first General Manager in Gastonia. John  was instrumental in REPI’s successes in the US, including the growth of the early years.  His personality allowed him to make friends anywhere he visited and was very well respected throughout the polyurethane industry worldwide. 
He will be missed.

Communication John E. Turnour

John started his career in urethanes at Firestone, which later became Foamex. He then worked at Rebus and at Everchem, and later went full time at Rebus.

After that he joined Repi and worked there until retirement. He was a good friend and will be missed by everyone here at Everchem–Editor.

June 16, 2023

Covestro Appoints New CTO

Dr. Thorsten Dreier appointed as new CTO of Covestro

Dr. Thorsten Dreier

The Supervisory Board of Covestro unanimously appointed Dr. Thorsten Dreier as Covestro’s new Chief Technology Officer. The 49-year-old will take over on July 1, 2023, from Dr. Klaus Schäfer, who most recently extended his expiring contract by six months to ensure personnel stability for Covestro during a challenging period in the market as a result of the ongoing energy crisis. 

“Dr. Thorsten Dreier has demonstrated his technological expertise, customer focus, market orientation and management qualities in our company over the last twenty years, and with great success. He has played a decisive role in shaping Covestro’s development,” said Dr. Richard Pott, Chairman of Covestro’s Supervisory Board. “He is therefore the ideal successor as Chief Technology Officer and will continue to successfully drive Covestro’s transformation towards a circular economy and to achieving climate neutrality.” 

“I am grateful for the trust placed in me. I am looking very much forward to working with Covestro employees and the other members of the Board of Management, give new impetus to the transformation of our company and to fulfill our aspired position as a pioneer in the chemical industry in decisively driving forward the circular economy,” said Dreier. 

In his role as Chief Technology Officer, Dreier will assume responsibility for the corporate functions Process Technology, Engineering, Group Health, Safety & Environment and Group Procurement. In the coming months, he will work with Dr. Klaus Schäfer, to prepare for the smooth takeover of his duties and familiarize himself with all the tasks of his future area of responsibility. 

About Dr. Thorsten Dreier: 

Dr. Thorsten Dreier, born in Münster in 1972, is currently Global Head of the Coatings & Adhesives Business Entity. He began his career in 2002 as a laboratory manager in the Bayer Group and subsequently held various management positions at Bayer, Bayer MaterialScience and Bayer Technology Services. With the spin-off of Covestro, Dreier became global Head of Production & Technology in the Coatings, Adhesives & Specialties business unit and later of the Specialty Films and Thermoplastic Polyurethanes business units. He studied chemistry and received his doctorate from the University of Münster in 2001. 

https://www.covestro.com/investors/news/dr-thorsten-dreier-appointed-as-new-cto-of-covestro/

April 10, 2023

Job Swap

Personnel changes at BASF

MOSCOW (MRC) — The Board of Executive Directors of BASF SE has decided on the following personnel changes, said the company.

Tobias Dratt (50), President, North America, BASF Corporation, Florham Park, New Jersey, will assume responsibility for the Division Global Business Services, Ludwigshafen, Germany, effective May 1, 2023.

Marc Ehrhardt (54), President, Global Business Services, Ludwigshafen, will, at the same time, assume responsibility for the Division North America, BASF Corporation, Florham Park, New Jersey.

We remind, BASF will establish compounding capacities for its certified compostable biopolymer ecovio in Shanghai, China, said the company. Upon the successful completion of qualification trials, commercial material quantities will be available for customers throughout the region Asia-Pacific from mid-2023.

https://www.mrchub.com/news/407096-personnel-changes-at-basf

March 9, 2023

Herman Stone

Herman Stone Found Better Ways to Make Polyurethane Foam

Chemist, who died at age 98, also visited schools to share his family’s Holocaust experiences

Herman Stone obtained two-dozen patents and was an expert witness on mattress flammability. Photo: Richard S. Stone

By James R. Hagerty

March 9, 2023 10:00 am ET2

Herman Stone, whose Jewish family fled Germany when he was 14 years old in 1939, adapted swiftly to American life. He earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at Ohio State University and worked as a researcher for U.S. chemical companies.

He obtained 24 patents, including one for a method of making soft foams used in cars and furniture. In 2007, he was elected to the Flexible Polyurethane Foam Hall of Fame. He was an expert witness on such matters as the flammability of mattresses. 

Though he never entirely shed his German accent and had an unusually precise style of speaking English, Dr. Stone was sufficiently Americanized to cheer fervently for the Ohio State Buckeyes football team and the Buffalo Bills.

For decades, he made it his mission to speak regularly at schools about the Holocaust in general and his family’s escape.

“The persecution of people, it’s not just Jews,” he said in an oral history recorded for the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo, N.Y. His goal in speaking to students, he said, was “to point out to them that it’s up to them, the next generation, to see that this never happens again to any other group. We hope that at least some of them remember and will do that.”

Dr. Stone died Feb. 9 at a hospital near Buffalo. He was 98. 

He was born Hermann Steinberg on Nov. 3, 1924, in Munich. (Years after moving to the U.S., he said, “my brother and I changed our name to Stone because we had no desire to be associated with Germany any longer.”)

In Germany, his father, Bernard Steinberg, worked for a maker of women’s clothing. 

Many Jews were expelled from schools in the 1930s. Hermann was allowed to attend school because his father had served in the German army during World War I. “That’s no way of getting an education,” he said. “I was the only Jewish child in the class. I had no friends. There were no extracurricular activities, because those were all done by the Hitler Youth.” 

His family’s synagogue was razed to make room for a parking lot.

By 1938, his parents had concluded that escaping Germany was their only chance of survival. The problem, Dr. Stone said, was that “there were not many countries that would take Jews.” Quotas for immigration into the U.S. were a small fraction of applications. His father, however, had applied early, and the family was eligible for a visa in 1939.

First, however, they had to find someone in the U.S. to sign papers promising to provide financial support if needed. The Steinbergs didn’t know anyone in the U.S. A business acquaintance of Bernard Steinberg, on a visit to the U.S., spoke to a rabbi, who found an American Jew willing to sign those papers.

Herman Stone kept the passport that allowed him to leave Germany as a teenager in 1939.Photo: Stone Family

At a U.S. consulate in Germany, the Steinbergs were told that their papers had been lost. After frantically recreating the documents, they finally received their visa.

A Nazi police official supervised the family as they packed up the few items they were allowed to keep. When he saw a small steel box, the official demanded to know what was inside. It contained Bernard Steinberg’s World War I souvenirs, including a bullet that had hit him and an X-ray of his wound. The official, apparently stung by the realization that even war veterans were being hounded out of Germany, chose to leave the family in peace to finish their packing.

“Here was a man who had done this kind of thing for years,” Dr. Stone said later, “and he had never really thought about what he was doing.”

Young Hermann, his brother Henry and their parents boarded a train in March 1939 and passed through the Netherlands. During a late-night ferry ride to England, the waves were choppy. More than 50 years later, Dr. Stone still recalled the retching of passengers. From England, the family sailed to New York.

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They chose to settle in Buffalo because they had met someone on the boat who was going there. Bernard Steinberg worked in a factory for a short time and then founded Steinberg Fine Foods to import delicacies from Europe.

Herman Stone earned a degree at Bethany College in West Virginia and served in the U.S. Army as a medical lab technician. While doing his graduate studies at Ohio State, he met  Margaret “Peggy” Sluizer, a journalism student. They married in 1949.

During his career, he worked for companies including Allied Chemical & Dye Corp., Malden Mills and General Foam Inc. Bill Gollnitz, technical director at Plastomer Corp., knew Dr. Stone for five decades and was struck by his dedication to finding ways to reduce the flammability of foam in furniture and bedding. “It wasn’t part of a government regulation,” Mr. Gollnitz said. “It was just something he thought was right.”

In his free time, Dr. Stone read technical journals, science fiction and history. “You never saw him without something to read,” said Barbara Reden, one of his daughters. 

Dr. Stone is survived by six children, 12 grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. His wife, Peggy Stone, died in 2019.

He never forgot relatives who didn’t escape Germany and died in the Holocaust. For his immediate family, “everything turned out well,” he said. “That didn’t happen to enough people.”

Write to James R. Hagerty at bob.hagerty@wsj.com

https://www.wsj.com/articles/herman-stone-found-better-ways-to-make-polyurethane-foam-12e26a6e

March 2, 2023

EVERCHEM UPDATE: VOL. 08 – Return of the Traveling Salesman

It takes a certain type, a certain essence, a certain logos to appreciate the beauty amidst the grind of business travel. Don’t let the allure of a first-class ticket fool you, the road can be rough for the uninitiated.

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