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My former colleague Fred Cooke, who has died aged 73, worked on the technology of plastics for more than 50 years and was of the generation that pioneered and shaped his industry. His ingenuity, good humour and can-do attitude was a perfect fit for the early days of innovation and the boom years of rapid development. He was widely known for his work on processing machinery, particularly in injection moulding and extrusion, and his long career was notable for an ability to keep pace with and adapt to profound changes in technology.
After an apprenticeship with the injection machine builder Peco in his native Battersea, south-west London, and national service with the Royal Engineers, Fred became sales and project engineer with Hamilton Machinery Sales. His drive and eye for a deal made it inevitable that he would strike out on his own.
This he did with the formation of Optimum Machinery Sales, which evolved into a plastics industry service group, covering design, marketing, consultancy and recruitment. Here, Fred's gift for lateral thinking came to the fore, particularly in the prototype of a sea-going injection-moulding system for cable-laying ships.
Fred also worked as a technical journalist and lectured at East Surrey College and what is now London Metropolitan University. In his leisure time, he was a keen skier, swimmer and scuba diver, and a judo black belt. He hoped to be remembered as "not such a bad bloke after all", a modest wish that will surely be granted. He is survived by his wife, Jenny, whom he married in 1956, and their sons, Stephen and Andrew.
