Plastics Hall of Famer Gigliotti dead at 88

GLOUCESTER, MASS. (April 24, 11:10 a.m. ET) -- Michael Gigliotti, who headed the House of the Future project at Disneyland and helped develop early plastic beverage bottles in a 35-year career at Monsanto Co., died April 21.

Gigliotti, 88, was inducted into the Plastics Hall of Fame in 2003. After retiring from Monsanto, he ran a consulting company, MGA Inc. in Gloucester, Mass., in the waterfront home that he shared with his wife, Miriam.

Born in Utica, N.Y., and raised in Hoboken, N.J., Gigliotti graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1942 with a mechanical engineering degree. Monsanto hired him to work in its 3-year-old Plastics Division.

When he was just 25, Monsanto named him supervisor of design engineering on a major expansion of its production of vinyl, polystyrene and melamine resin complex in Springfield, Mass. Later, he headed two other resin plant construction projects.

Monsanto then picked Gigliotti to head a new effort launched in 1955, the Structural Plastics Engineering Group — which worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to design a plastic house. The result — an exotic, space-age house with four elegant wings cantilevered off a central pedestal — was built at in 1957 at the new Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, Calif.

Gigliotti played a key role in creating building codes for plastics products, working with the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. From 1961-1968, he was director of process engineering and technology for Monsanto’s Plastics Division.

In the late 1960s, the company again assigned Gigliotti to a groundbreaking project: lead a team to develop plastic packaging with low levels of oxygen permeation. The result: the first plastic soda bottle—of acrylonitrile, not PET.

Coke introduced the Easy-Goer 32-ounce plastic bottle in 1975.

As a consultant, Gigliotti also had a major role in the move by Bekum Maschinenfabriken GmbH, the German blow molding machinery maker, starting its U.S. operation in 1979.

Gigliotti remained actively involved in the global plastics industry. He recently nominated Trevor Evans, chairman of Nampak Ltd. of South Africa, to the Plastics Hall of Fame. Evans will be inducted into the hall during NPE2009.