Wylie Royce has served as the chairman of the Plastics Industry Association; treasurer of the group’s food, drug and cosmetic packaging materials committee; board member of the Foodservice Packaging Institute; and member of Health Beauty America’s Technical Advisory Board.
When Wylie Royce was announced as one of the nominees for the 2020 Plastics Hall of Fame, he joked the Plastics Academy had a "momentary lapse of reason."
Royce quoted the Pink Floyd song during a recent interview with Plastics News discussing his induction into the Hall.
"I feel like it's amazing to me on many levels," he said. "It speaks volumes that you don't have to be the most successful, the smartest, the most prolific, the richest — whatever you want to call it — to recognize you within your industry."
Royce, a Hofstra University graduate with a major in business and minor in engineering, is well known in the plastics color concentrates sector, is celebrating nearly 45 years in the plastics business.
"I've had a good career, I tell people I'm kind of entering the final wash or spin cycle with my career," he said. "You start wanting to give something back."
Royce has "given back" by serving as the past immediate chairman of the Plastics Industry Association, treasurer of the group's food, drug and cosmetic packaging materials committee; board member of the Foodservice Packaging Institute, as well as a member of Health Beauty America's Technical Advisory Board.
"This is the culmination of a lot of people and a lot of things going in our favor over the years," he said.
Royce Chemical Co. was founded in 1929 by Albert Royce Sr. as a textile chemical manufacturer. It produced sodium hydrosulfite, sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate and zinc formaldehyde.
Royce Chemical Co. was founded in 1929 by Albert Royce Sr. as a textile chemical manufacturer. It produced sodium hydrosulfite, sodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate and zinc formaldehyde. Royce continued to serve the chemical community in zinc powder for alkaline batteries, indigo dispersion for indigo dye, before delving into color concentrates and additive masterbatches for the plastics industry in 1989.
It was just before that transition in the mid-1980s that Wylie joined the family business.
Growing up, Royce knew he wanted to be part of Royce Chemical.
"I think I started working every summer since I was 14 years old," he said. "And that was good, it taught me what I didn't want to have to do for the rest of my life."
He had contemplated an engineering degree, to join the production side of the business. But his on-the-job experience set him on a different path.
"It just didn't fit my mindset — I found it a little bit restrictive in terms of what I had imagined," he said. "I thought maybe my talents weren't in that direction so much."
So Royce turned to a focus in business while still choosing to minor in engineering, where he was able to use problem solving and apply it to applications in sales or marketing.
"I was able to visualize things better in both engineering and business — that's how it just worked out for me," he said.
Upon completing college, he knew exactly what he was going to do for work — Royce Chemical. He knew the pay and knew what he was going to be doing, but there was a small hitch in his plan.
"I'm thinking, 'OK, I'm back home, I can take a little vacation,'" he said. "I go to my father and ask him 'gee, when do you think I should start?'"
"He said 'Well this is Fourth of July weekend, so July 5.'"
Royce Chemical Co. was founded in 1929 by Albert Royce Sr. as a textile chemical manufacturer.
New technology was driving hard competition between other chemical companies at the time. From a sales perspective, Royce felt as though they were getting beat up.
"Competitors had gotten to some of those patents before we had," he said.
In 1979, Royce Chemical bought a small manufacturing company that was doing well, and sold the chemical business, which allowed his father and grandfather to retire in 1981.
They owned a small zinc plant and the dye business, so Royce got to work peddling dyes and selling them to color concentrate manufacturers, paper mills, etc.
"I sort of had an affinity for the plastic business, for seeing all the color concentrate guys," he said. "We were looking to find another leg for the business to keep it growing, because what we were running at the time was very small."
Royce arranged some meetings and the group entered into reprocessing scrap polystyrene.
The challenges of taking scrap material and turning it into something with better properties is something Royce empathizes with to this day.
"I understand the pitfalls and what the challenges of recycling are and they are pretty big," he said.
Such an understanding turned into an opportunity thanks to some red Solo cup scrap. A customer was interested in the scrap because its was having issues with red color concentrate. Royce said he could fix that, as his firm had manufactured the original dye.
He took the buyer down the street to a concentrate company and before they knew it, they were able to help the customer with the scrap issue.
"The light bulb goes off," he said.
Royce then welcomed the company into the concentrate analysis business, around 1991, when they also joined what is now the Plastics Industry Association and the compounders group that eventually became part of a food and drug group.
"Going back again to my engineering background, I had an affinity for understanding regulatory issues and how to deal with them," he said.
That set Royce Global off in a direction that was a boom for its business: colors and additives in food packaging.
"That really put us on the map," he said.
Royce's connections through the association helped the company's drug and cosmetic packaging business.
"It helps us do what we do, which is to make a good product and do the right thing by our customer," he said. "And to give something back, I got more and more involved in the association and spending more time. I tell people I landed in a pretty good place."
Today, Royce is still running the business but is prepping his nephew to take over. He plans to finish 2021 strong and continue to strategize and run tactics before he starts thinking about retirement.
"I'll be hitting another decade of life in February, so at that I said, 'OK, it's about time to change my career path a little bit at that point,'" Royce said.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Wylie and his wife, Nancy, enjoyed traveling, both for business and pleasure. For decades, the Royces were putting a quarter-million miles on a plane each year. So the last year of sitting still has been a change.
Royce found much enjoyment in traveling to meet customers in person and can hardly wait for the virus concerns to pass to travel again.
"My world was always meeting people, getting together with the for lunch, dinner — whatever — and developing friendships," he said. "We'd openly discuss, 'How can we help?' or 'Is there anything we can do?'"
Royce said he made a lasting impact on his company by helping customers become more successful.
"You can't do that on a Zoom call," he said.
Wylie and Nancy plan to travel once things settle down with the virus, but they plan to do it a little differently.
"I think we'll do more enjoyment traveling, renting in areas so we could get a little bit more immersed in the culture," he said.
In between his career at Royce Global and working with the Plastics Industry Association, Royce found mentorship as another rewarding part of the industry.
He urges younger folks getting into the plastics business to find a mentor. He's served as one several times and while they are only supposed to last for six months, the friendship has continued several years and cover broad areas.
"Find a good mentor and learn from them, learn from their mistakes," he said. "Be generous with your time and ideas. Pay it forward. That's been my career really, to a large extent, and I believe it really works," he said.
Royce pointed out another perk to the plastics industry — constantly learning. The industry is constantly innovation and improving upon itself, especially in the manner of sustainability, he said.
"I've been in this industry for over 30 years and I don't think a week goes by that I don't learn something new," he said.
Product processing, customer coming to him with a question, looking up new technology, the list is endless.
"When you can have a career where every week you're continuing to learn, that really keeps you sharp, it keeps you interested and keeps you motivated."
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