Paul Ita runs Notch Consulting, a Massachusetts-based research company dedicated to the market research needs of the global specialty chemicals industry. Mr. Ita focuses on raw materials for the global tire and rubber industries, with a particular focus on carbon black, silica, and rubber chemicals. Through Notch, he publishes the Carbon Black World Data Book and the Carbon Black Quarterly Newsletter.
Dale Clark is Chief Technology Officer at Birla Carbon. He is based at the Company’s head office in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. In this role, Mr. Clark leads the Technology Function globally.
Mr. Clark joined the Carbon Black business in 2005 as the Unit Head of the Marshall Facility in West Virginia. In 2009, he assumed responsibility as the Director of Manufacturing for the Specialty Blacks Business.
Mr. Clark subsequently assumed a senior leadership position in the Process Technology Group, which includes Development, Manufacturing, Technical Services and Engineering. In 2014, he was appointed Chief Technology Officer.
Mr. Clark has over 30 years of experience in the Carbon Black Manufacturing and Technology Industry. Prior to joining Birla Carbon, he held a variety of senior management positions at Cabot Corporation.
Mr. Clark holds a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology.
Timothy Hoover is a managing director at Piper Sandler and co-heads the firm’s project finance investment banking practice. Hoover joined Piper Sandler in 2016 following a 22-year investment banking career at Raymond James & Associates, Inc. and UBS Investment Bank including its predecessor firms.
Hoover has specific industry experience with a wide range of energy and industrial related project developments in the power generation, co-generation, district heating and cooling, waste-to-energy, coal to liquid fuels, gasification and petrochemical sectors in addition to infrastructure and industrial manufacturing projects.
During his career he has concentrated on projects dedicated to sustainability, including recycling and sustainable manufacturing and packaging projects. He has also focused on the renewable and alternative energy sectors, including but not limited to solar, wind, wood pellets, ethanol, biodiesel, landfill gas, hydroelectric, thermal and biomass power generation.
A senior consultant at Weibold, Mr. Kyriakos supports associations, investors and start-ups in tire recycling projects. With emphasis on pyrolysis projects in recent years, his work includes big data analysis, LCAs and circularity reports, as well as feasibility studies, technology evaluations and business modeling.
Mr. Kyriakos is impassioned by a belief that protection of our environment and our resources can only be achieved through bold international efforts - coupled with economically viable technical innovation on a local level. He is striving to apply his first hand experience to support innovative enterprises in striking a balance between technological, economic, market, and regulatory challenges, all the while helping governmental organizations identify bottle necks, impasses, and opportunities for win-win regulatory actions affecting the value chain.
Mr. Sheerin is responsible for environmental, regulatory and legislatives issues relating to end-of-life tires. He represents the tire industry before state legislatures, and state agencies in rulemakings. He represents the industry as their expert on end of life tire issues, and he authors the biennial USTMA U.S. Scrap Tire Markets report.
He participates in various state, trade association and standard making committees to encourage markets for End-of-life tires addressing both annual generation and abandoned piles, and organizes conferences to grown and support scrap tire recycling. Before joining the USTMA in 2014, Mr. Sheerin was the Retail Environmental Director for Bridgestone Retail Operations, responsible for all the environmental aspects of the retail company including compliance management, environmental education, property related environmental issues, waste recycling and disposal and emergency situations.
Prior to that, he worked as a Professional Environmental Engineer. Mr. Sheerin holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering and his master’s degree in environmental engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is also a JD graduate of the Chicago Kent School of Law.
As a lifelong entrepreneur, Scott has created, operated, managed, and adapted to many diverse businesses during the past 30 years, with emphasis in the tire recycling industry.
Since 1995 Scott has designed, constructed or operated 11 whole tire to crumb facilities. An estimated 200,000,000 scrap tires have been processed through these plants during the last 25 years.
Currently Scott is consulting for Kal Tire, a multinational company, to lead the design and build of mining tyre thermal conversion recycling facilities on 3 continents. The first of these plants operating is located in Chile. These facilities will be the first of their type in the world. He shares the vision of a bright future for value added recovered carbon black from end of life tyres.
Azemi Samsuri is currently a Visiting Professor at the Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia, and concurrently he is also a Director of his own rubber consultant company ANURAZ SDN BHD. His other two current appointments are as a Technical Consultant of a tyre retreading at Sunrich Integrated Sdn Bhd and as a Technical Advisor of a recycling carbon black at Eco Power Synergy Sdn Bhd.
Dr. Vitaly Khusidman is a Founder and CEO of G3C Technologies Corporation. He has 35 years of innovation in process control for chemical, nuclear power, pharma and material handling industries. Dr. Khusidman has tire conversion method patents awarded in USA and Canada; the European, Indian and Chinese patents are pending. Dr. Khusidman is experienced in starting and growing companies, as well as in business and financial management.
David Shaw is the owner and Chief Executive at a small company called Tire Industry Research (TIRes). He has 30 years' experience of the global tire industry.
TIRes publishes a weekly newsletter on the tire industry in China as well as monthly reports on the global tire industry. These are regarded as some of the most influential publications in the tire industry and are essential sources of information and insight for many stakeholders.
His customers include tire makers, tire wholesalers, and suppliers to the tire industry as well as financial institutions, other consultants, and government departments and industry associations.
He regularly advises chief executives and corporate strategists on the future development of the global tire industry
David regularly presents at conferences and tire industry events in Asia, the Americas and Europe.
Biography to follow.
Rajesh has entrepreneurial experience in oil & gas, GreenTech, mobile telecommunications and Circular Economy business models for complex industrial plant process and operations within industrial verticals focusing on Industry 4.0 readiness and transformation. He has extensive experience in emerging tech industries -WasteTech, FinTech, MedTech, AgriTech, IIOT, content, social and media platforms, products and services. Whilst managing complex , diverse projects and industry transformation across multinational organisations, Rajesh has lobbied for sustainable energy technologies within and for NGO’s, government institutions and SOE’s.
Martin von Wolfersdorff is a consultant specialising in alternative rubber fillers and tire pyrolysis. He is in contact with over 320 tire pyrolysis companies globally and advises tyre manufacturing associations, tire manufacturers, tire collectors, refineries, pyrolysis technology providers & operators on the global tire pyrolysis industry and the marketing of recovered carbon black. Previously, Martin worked in the carbon black industry with Cabot, in the custom colour masterbatch industry with Americhem and in the white pigment industry with Huntsman Pigments. Martin holds a Dipl. Ing. (Univ.) degree in chemical engineering from the Friedrich Alexander University in Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany.
Nate Murphy is the CTO of Bolder Industries, focusing on the production of sustainable carbon black for use in eco-friendly plastics and rubber products. When he joined Bolder Industries, he committed to using his engineering skills and technology-mindset to bringing the theory of a sustainable carbon black to a consistent manufacturing state, which included rehabilitating an industrial plant in Maryville, MO, to produce Bolder Black, rCB. Now, he’s turned his focus to improving performance, cost, and sustainability of rubber and plastic compounds alongside customer’s technical teams.
In 2019, he expanded his role with ASTM, the American Standards Testing Institute, bringing his real-world masterbatch, pyrolysis, and recovered carbon black experience to the leadership of this global manufacturing standards group.
Mr. Murphy has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Gonzaga University and an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Colorado School of Mines. Outside of work, he spends time in the mountains on his snowboard, hiking trails, or training alongside his wife at CrossFit.
At ARTIS, my role is to manage our specialist team of technicians and scientists to deliver our clientswith expert advice and support towards their product development and business goals. ARTIS is aaccredited testing and consultancy business and, along with its parent company AVON Rubber, hasover 125 years of experience in the rubber industry.
Pieter ter Haar is an expert in recovered carbon black (rCB), pyrolysis, and sustainability. He has extensive expertise managing R&D for rCB companies in Europe and North America. After obtaining his Chemistry degree from the Hanze University (Groningen, the Netherlands), he worked as a Rubber Compounder for Fenner Dunlop Conveyor Belting in the Netherlands, where he was in charge of sustainability development of rubber compounds.
Pieter joined Pyrolyx/cct Stegelitz in 2015 to develop, build, and manage the first R&D Competence Center fully dedicated to rCB research. He is one of the founding members of the new ASTM D36 rCB committee, and in his current role as Vice Chair, he leads various task groups within the committee. Pieter is currently president of Terhaar Consulting Inc. in Ontario Canada and consults internationally on various topics related to sustainability, pyrolysis and recovered Carbon Black.
Christian Höfels studied process engineering to a bachelor degree in Hamburg and finished his academic education with a master degree in process engineering at the university of Braunschweig. He joined NETZSCH Trockenmahltechnik GmbH, a company specialized in fine grinding and classifying, six years ago. As a specialist for “Process Technology Development” he is in charge for new trends and optimization in all kinds of processes. The activities start with trials in the test lab, go on to the construction and up to commissioning and optimization of the plants in industrial operation.
After the studies of mechanical engineering with main course in energy and process technology at the University of Applied Sciences Augsburg, Alexander Krauser worked for different companies in the field of tank construction and plant engineering.
In 2002 he joined HOSOKAWA Alpine AG, a global leader in the field of mechanical process technology, especially for comminution and classifying of a wide range of materials. As a project leader he was responsible for planning and commissioning of plants in the pharmaceutical and food industry. With this experience he changed 2006 to the Chemical Division and worked as a sales engineer. After few years he was responsible for a regional sales and engineering team. In 2015 he was appointed to Head of Sales in the Chemical Division.
Krzysztof Wróblewski is a chemical and process engineer who gained his first pyrolysis experiences at Warsaw University of Technology as a member of research team and quickly became one of the designers of new technology at Contec. Taking part in the construction and leading the startup of the plant allowed him to implement and test new ideas. Now, as CEO, Krzysztof is still developing new solutions to perfect the process performance.
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