Names in the News: Gloucester Engineering, Teknor Apex, Elevance

Jon Bourne has returned to extrusion equipment supplier Gloucester Engineering Co. (GEC; Gloucester, MA) as its territory service manager for the EMEA region. Bourne has 30 years of experience in the plastics extrusion industry and rejoins GEC from Swiss Winding Performance, where he worked for approximately 12 months. Prior to Swiss Winding, Bourne spent the bulk of his career with GEC and its predecessor companies, where he held a variety of positions managing equipment installations, technical support and aftermarket parts and services.

Teknor Apex Company's thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) division has promoted Nick Sandland and Elizabeth Ponte to two new positions, which were created to provide a what the company calls a "strong regional focus for marketing and sales in the Americas." Sandland, who will now be the marketing and sales director for the Americas, helped the company set up direct sales and distribution structures for its TPE business in Europe. In the U.S. he assisted in launching the Medalist range of medical elastomers. A native of England, Sandland joined Teknor Apex in 2006 as its European market manager for TPEs. He relocated to the U.S. in 2008 to become senior industrial market manager for TPEs, before being promoted to senior medical market manager.

Elizabeth Ponte, who has been named marketing manager Americas joined Teknor Apex in 2001 as a process engineer for the Vinyl Division. She later worked as the assistant production manager for the former Rubber Division, consumer-product market manager in the TPE division. Most recently, she was the sales representative for the Bioplastics Division's Terraloy compounds. Ponte holds an MBA in marketing from the University of Rhode Island as well as bachelors degrees in chemical engineering and German. She speaks German, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Elevance Renewable Sciences Inc. (Bolingbrook, IL) has named David Kelsey as its chief financial officer (CFO). Kelsey was most recently senior VP and CFO at Sealed Air Corp. Prior to Sealed Air, Kelsey served as CFO of two small cap growth companies, one of which was privately owned and one of which was publicly traded. Kelsey has a Bachelor of Science and Engineering from Princeton University and an MBA from Harvard University. Elevance creates specialty chemicals from natural oils, using a Nobel Prize-winning technology called olefin metathesis.