Second Act for Shaffer’s Consulting Business Includes Sustainability

Following a six-year stint split between Flex and Westfall Technik, long-time plastics industry veteran Rick Shaffer has restarted his InterTech Rx business, with the goal of helping processors find technology solutions to problems as well as helping them become part of the nascent circular economy for plastics.

Shaffer’s career in plastics includes nearly 30 years in injection molding machinery, starting at the former Demag Plastics Machinery in 1983 before moving on to Netstal in 2002. In 2010, Shaffer left Netstal to start InterTech, which temporarily ceased operations in 2013 when he joined Flex.

We believe that by using technology, we can achieve the goal of zero waste and offset the unavoidable costs by improved profitability.

Shaffer told Plastics Technology that InterTech’s second act will have a broader focus. “The focus of InterTech Rx was on bringing technology from Europe and providing production solutions to dramatically improve productivity and quality,” Shaffer said. “Going forward, that will still be an integral part of the focus, but we are expanding the scope to apply it to sustainability.”

In a release announcing the restart of InterTech, Shaffer called the impact of plastics on the environment “indisputable”, and pushed the industry towards zero waste. “We created the problem; we need to take ownership and fix the problem,” Shaffer said in the release.

“We all know that people want to save the planet, as long as it saves them money,” Shaffer told Plastics Technology. “We believe that by using technology, we can achieve the goal of zero waste and offset the unavoidable costs by improved profitability. There is, of course, much more to achieving that goal that we will be doing, but I hope this helps.”

Shaffer believes that the use of high tech production solutions will be the key to providing sustainability without sacrificing the advantages of plastics or profitability. “Achieving zero waste will be the result of a holistic approach to production solutions from end-to-end,” Shaffer said.

Shaffer noted that work has already begun in earnest in multiple sectors, including packaging, medical and light industrial, with case studies characterizing the work underway.