Category: LSC Post

With pen and paper in hand, we sat by the fire sipping hot chocolate, scribbling out our Christmas wish list for Santa. We’d pondered, stared at the flickering flames for a moment, and then excitedly jotted down another potential joy-bringing item. The planning and dreaming that filled our minds with hopeful anticipation was almost as fun as the morning when the gifts were revealed. 

From mid-last century through the decades that followed, as young-uns made their Christmas lists, more and more items on those lists were made of plastic. Prior to that time, in the early twentieth century, most toys on children’s lists were made of wood or metal.

In the early years of the 1900’s, the favorite toys of our grandparents and great grandparents included cuddly surprises like the Teddy Bear or the Raggedy Ann doll. Then, topping the list of favorite metal toys were the Erector Set, a Lionel train set, or a red Radio Flyer wagon. Wooden toys were also high on many-a-child’s list. One of those all-time-favorites from one hundred years ago was the yo-yo, hand-carved from a single piece of wood.

Celluloid

The first plastic used in toys was celluloid. According to Science History, “Celluloid, developed in the late 19th century, launched the modern age of man-made plastics… celluloid became an everyday material, just like the hundreds of plastics that would follow after World War II.”

The word “plastic” comes from the Greek word for “molded.” The word means something that is capable of being molded or shaped. In nature, there have always been plastic materials. Rubber, amber, and even glass, which is moldable at high temperatures, are types of plastic by the definition of “to be molded.”

Celluloid was the first synthetic plastic. It was invented in 1863 by John Wesley Hyatt in upstate New York. Hyatt was a printer by trade and the son of a blacksmith. The celluloid product Hyatt created was in response to an advertisement that offered an incredible $10,000 for a substitute  that could be used in the place of elephant tusk ivory in the production of billiard balls.  Billiards was becoming increasingly popular and the expense of obtaining African ivory was also increasing. 

Before long, celluloid was used in many popular products, from beautiful handles on hairbrushes and mirror sets that adorned a lady’s dressing table to cufflinks worn by gentlemen. “The first plastic toys made of celluloid appeared late in the 19th century. It was not until World War II that plastic toys became firmly established.” (Plastics – The Mag). In time, celluloid was discovered to have several drawbacks. Celluloid was flammable, could be fragile, and its surface cracked and deteriorated over time. It was used in manufacturing for decades, but was not the ideal plastic material.

Bakelite and Catalin

There was a  later contemporary of celluloid that began to increase its share of the market. It was called Bakelite. Produced in the first quarter of the twentieth century, Bakelite (and Catalin, another trade name for a similar product) was used in the production of toys, jewelry, trophies, and more. According to Amelia Danver, “Leo Bakeland created the world’s first entirely synthetic plastic called Bakelite. This marked the start of the modern plastics industry.”

When Bakelite’s patent ran out in 1927, The American Catalin Company picked up their process, using the same chemicals, but added no fillers. Instead of the dark and dreary plastics made by Bakelite, the Catalin products were translucent and could be made into a variety of bright colors. Catalin products were made from 1928 until World War II.

Before World War II, surprisingly, Germany was one of the world’s leading toy manufacturers. The United States imported vast numbers of toys from the European nation. But, as the political climate deteriorated, those large numbers of imports ceased. And American manufacturers stepped in to take the leading role. One of the leaders was a small company who had been founded in the 1930’s called Fisher Price. Fisher Price began in 1931 when its four founders took 16 of their wooden toys to the American International Toy Fair in New York City. Their toys were a hit at the fair – especially their Dr. Doodle.

By the late 1940’s, Fisher-Price was barely ten years old. They became the first company to produce their entire product line from plastic. It was such a raging success that their competitors, like the Ideal Toy Company, adopted their business model and produced a whopping three million plastic phones in just a few months.

“In the early 1950’s, Fisher-Price identified plastic as a material that could help the company incorporate longer-lasting decorations and brighter colors into its toys. ‘Buzzy Bee’ was among the first Fisher-Price toys to make use of plastic. By the end of the 1950s, Fisher-Price manufactured 39 toys incorporating plastics.” (Wikipedia)

Bioplastics are Biodegradable

Kip McAlister, president and CEO of Lone Star, took time with an interviewer to answer questions about Lone Star’s logistics, operations, and the defining traits of the company.

The polymer business has a bright future ahead of it. So say the authors of a recent white paper. “The next 50 years will be an exciting and rewarding time. Rewarding for the polymer industry. And for the world that depends upon it.” Such was the conclusion of the study, which Perkin Elmer Inc., a U.S.-based research firm, published in 2020.

That conclusion comes as no surprise to the team at Lone Star Chemical. Lone Star, growing steadily for years, currently enjoys its best year in the business.

Part of what makes Lone Star successful is its ability to roll with the changes. And adapt as market realities shift. Matt Marshall, Vice President of Purchasing and Sales at Lone Star Chemical, knows that responsiveness matters. A company must listen to its customer base.

Polymer Progress

Asked what new direction Lone Star might be pursuing these days, Matt replied with no hesitation. “We’re focusing more on biodegradable types of products right now,” he said. “That’s the area that we’d like to grow in. There seems to be a big push for those kind of products.”

Indeed, the white paper cited earlier reached the same conclusion. Perkin Elmer Inc., a research firm specializing in industry, surveyed the field. They observed that research-and-developments firms in the polymers field keep investigating recyclability of their products. They want to bring better plastic formulations to market.

“The demand for better, less environmentally impactful materials shapes the reality for these companies,” the report states. “The competition increases to develop new products with advanced performance capabilities. The idea: advance a ‘circular economy’ for plastics. In addition to industry demands, polymer production companies continuously search for ways to improve efficiency, control costs, and streamline their processes. All the while, they meet their customers’ needs and comply with regulatory standards.”

The entire white paper resides on Perkin Elmer’s website.

Polymers Recycling

One of the product lines Lone Star already sells goes by the name “repro.” The term “repro” stands for “reprocessed recycled materials.”

Perkin Elmer, in its study, cited three important benefits that polymers recycling provides to society and the environment. For one, by returning materials to the polymer production process, recycling reduces the need for virgin raw materials. Second, using recycled resins instead of virgin resins reduces energy consumption during plastics production up to 88 percent. And third, using recycled plastics reduces air emissions during plastics production by up to 71 percent.

For all these reasons, Lone Star keeps expanding its biodegradable lines. Further, the company finds other environmentally friendly offerings. Not surprisingly, Matt Marshall sees the direction as being good for everyone.

Polymers and Pricing

The Lone Star VP stays fully engaged in all of the company’s other efforts, too, for that matter. In his capacity as VP of Purchasing, he liaisons with some of the biggest petrochemical firms in the nation.

“I work with most of them—most of the major oil companies,” he says. “The main challenge there becomes just knowing the polymers markets. And knowing when to buy and when not to buy. As well as knowing what products work for your customers. There’s also the matter of price. It all comes down to offering a competitive price.”

He continued: “When we purchase from the oil companies the material ships in rail cars. Those run about 200,000 pounds [per car]. We’ll send it to various parts of the United States and break it down into 1,500 pound gaylord boxes. So we sell a range of quantities. We can sell everything from one gaylord box up to multiple rail cars that go directly to our customers’ plants.”

In his pre-Lone Star life, Matt worked in motor sports. He served on the Joe Gibbs Racing Team, working mainly out of Indianapolis and Detroit. Today Matt’s sporting life stays confined mainly to hunting and practicing martial arts.

But like all Lone Star employees, Matt’s never far from a phone. And he, like the rest of the company, prides himself on being that “live voice” that’s available to customers. For more on Matt, see his bio.

If there ever was someone who could be said to have been “born” into the plastics industry, that person would have to be Kip McAlister, president and CEO of Lone Star Chemical. Kip’s birth came at a time when his father, Mike McAlister, was deep into his career at Fina Oil and Chemical Company, selling plastics, and was on the verge of stepping away from there to establish a wholesaler firm of his own, dealing in polystyrene. Mike made that move, and Kip grew up in the family biz, eventually taking a position in it, and later getting promoted to its top spot. (For more on Kip’s background, see his bio.)

One of Kip’s biggest contributions to the company has come in the form of making connections. His early push as newly appointed president and CEO was to develop a greater network of upstream partnerships.

“When I took over, my emphasis was on getting multiple suppliers,” Kip says.

Mike McAlister, during his earlier tenure as CEO, had been very loyal to Fina because of his background there. “And so he [Mike] would not really buy from anybody else,” Kip says. “He just was very loyal to them, and they were very good to him as well. Can’t complain. But anytime you add a little competition to the mix, I think you always make it better. And so, I’ve worked very hard to do get multiple suppliers and not be dependent upon just one supplier…. We don’t have all of our apples in one basket.”

He adds: “My dad’s company was strictly a reseller [of Fina’s products]. I didn’t want to stay small or just stay with what we were doing.”

Having more suppliers means being able to shop more widely for the best deals for Lone Star’s customers—and pass along the savings, Kip said.

The company has also, over the years, branched out from its earliest practice of reselling only polystyrene. Now Lone Star sells polypropylene, polyethylene, repro, and other products.

The typical customer for Lone Star is a business that uses injection molding machines to melt and form these polymers into various products for end users.

One example is Spill Tech, a company that manufactures absorbents for cleaning up spills. They buy polymers from Lone Star. Eddie Reid, plant manager at Spill Tech (SpillTech.com) said that Lone Star is “easy to do business with.”

“They are honest and they are competitive,” Reid says. “And Kip is professional, knowledgeable, and easy to deal with.”

According to Kip, the companies that Lone Star targets for sales are companies that the big producers of plastic don’t want to sell to directly. “Meanwhile, they [the petrochemical plants] want the Rubbermaids, the Hefty Trash Bags, Igloos, companies like that,” Kip says. “They want companies that can buy 10 to 20 rail cars a month. They [those producers] want us to sell to people who have to buy smaller than that. Smaller quantities.”

In an arrangement like this, everyone wins. The large petrochemical plants can keep their client list small and do not have to keep tabs on hundreds of small(er) quantity buyers. The Lone Stars of the world can buy in bulk from the chemical plants, then break down the railcar loads into smaller allotments and distribute those to Lone Star’s own customers, most of whom are manufacturers and merchandisers.

Asked what kind of questions he gets from his customers, Kip doesn’t hesitate. “They always want to know what we think the market is going to do, one month to the next,” he says. “They always want to get some kind of forecast. Like, ‘What do you think is going to happen in the next two or three months?’”

But he has to be honest. He doesn’t have a crystal ball and neither does anyone else. “This year, it’s been a dart throw against the wall. Whatever the dart hits, that’s what you [would] think is going to happen. You have no idea, quite honestly.”

But for all of that, the work remains satisfying. It’s satisfying, Kip said, to sell so much material to so many businesses that create made-in-America goods. Indeed, most of Lone Star’s customers are U.S.-based businesses. “I’m glad we have American manufacturers, obviously,” he says. “We have customers from coast to coast.”

As the clientele for Lone Star Chemical keeps growing, it’s obvious they are pleased with Lone Star as well. The plastics/polymers/resins industry is a small world, relatively speaking, but it’s a thriving one, for customers, distributors, and manufacturers alike. Even if they don’t know what the market will do one month to the next.