Merle Snyder, Editor — Plastics Conveying & Plastics Drying Knowledge Center
Merle R. Snyder has spent virtually his entire working life writing impartially about the plastics industry and plastics processing machinery. Merle has served as Editor-in-Chief of Plastics Machinery & Equipment and Plastics Machinery & Auxiliaries magazines, and also worked with Modern Plastics magazine, and contributed to Injection Molding magazine, Plastics Design Forum, Plastics Compounding, Plastics Engineering, High Performance Composites, and Composites Technology magazines, in addition to online plastics publishing services. In the course of this coverage Merle has attended plastics shows in Germany, Japan, Taiwan, England, Italy, Mexico, Canada, and all over the United States.
Merle was educated in the state of Indiana at Purdue University (West Lafayette) and Goshen College (Goshen), including coursework in Germany, Ireland, Belize, and Canada. Merle lives in Colorado, where he was born, after returning in 1977 from Pennsylvania and Indiana, where he was raised. From 1977 to 1980 he worked in Colorado for charitable 501(c)(3) corporations before beginning his plastics publishing career in 1981.
In the trivia category, when he was first hired into the business Merle was asked, “Do you have any problem with plastics?” to which he replied, “I don’t know. I don’t think so. Should I?” The rest, as they say, is history. Merle has attended every NPE show in Chicago since 1982 for a total of ten in a row, over a period of 30 years.
