Obituary: Husky Founder and Plastics Pioneer Robert Schad

Founder of Husky Injection Molding Systems Ltd. and a member of the Plastics Hall of Fame, Robert Schad, 95, passed away in Toronto on July 11.

“Today we bid farewell to Robert Schad, the visionary who founded Husky,” the company wrote on LinkedIn. “Robert was more than our founder, he was an industry pioneer, innovative thinker, and forward-thinking leader who played a pivotal role in shaping the values and purpose that we at Husky uphold to this day.”

A titan of Canadian industry, Schad emigrated to Canada from Germany in 1951. A mechanical engineer, he founded Husky in 1953 in Bolton, ON, to manufacture snowmobiles, notes his bio on the Plastics Hall of Fame website. The business was not successful and he transitioned into toolmaking for high production applications. Unsatisfied with the injection molding machines of the time, which he found to be too slow to run his molds, he designed and built a high-speed injection molding machine in the early 1960s. The company grew rapidly with one billion dollars in revenue and more than 1000 employees, according to the Plastics Hall of Fame.

Schad retired from Husky in 2005 and founded Athena Automation, a manufacturer of injection molding machines, in 2008.

He was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2006.

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An avid outdoorsman and environmentalist, he founded the Schad Foundation in 1987 to support environmental education, biodiversity conservation, and access to nutritious food.