DR. SHOMNATH CHAKRAVARTY (M.Sc. & D.Phil., FPRI (UK), FIRI, FICS, FIIChE, FIC-India) of KPS Consultants & Impex Pvt. Ltd., Delhi is a leading Consultant in rubber & allied field and functioning as retainer Consultant to many well-known rubber industry in India & abroad.

>Dr. Chakravarty has 50 year's experience in rubber industry - both India & Abroad. After working with German rubber industry & Bayer AG, Germany for many years he returned to India as Technical Manager of Bayer (India) Ltd. and then of Modi Rubber Ltd. (with Continental Reifen, Germany collaboration). Subsequently he started in 1993 his own Consultancy Organisation in Rubber and related field.

He is the past Chairman of Indian Rubber Institute

Dr. Chakravarty has been Hon. Professor of IIT, Delhi and Kharagpur , visiting Faculty to different Universities & Institutes. He was the Convenor / Chairman of SC 2, Rubber Committee (TC 45) of ISO & was a member of IRCO, UK Committee. He was the Convenor of first IRCO Conference, Rubber Con '93 held at Delhi in 1993 and member of Indian Tyre Technical Advisory Committee for many years.

Dr. Chakravarty has been selected to receive one of its most internationally prominent honors, the GOLD MEDAL FOR INDIA by American Biographical Institute in 2012. Dr. Chakravarty was conferred “Life Time Achievement Award" by the IIChE, in October 2011 and by “Tyre Times” TRiLA Awards 2015 at Chennai SingEx Expo.

class="rkts2">Dr. Chakravarty has 120 Publications in National & International journals of repute and published books on “Introduction to Tyre Technology” / “Basics on Radial Tyre” / “Rubber Technology and Manufacture of Rubber Products” / “Encyclopedia for Rubber Products Manufacturing” / “Scientific & Technological Achievements in Rubber Field During Last Five Decades” / “Rubber Research in India – Two Decades”.

His hobby is Poetry (translate German / English poetry in Bengali & English), Indus Civilization / Archeology and travelling worldwide, covered around 50 countries.

Dr. Anomitra Chakravarty has more than 29 years’ experience in the industry in various capacities and positions. He is managing director of KPS Consultants & Impex Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, a project & technical consultancy organization working in the field of Biodegradable & Bioplastics, Recycling of Plastics & Rubber, Green Chemicals & Additives, Natural Fiber Plastic Composites and Sustainable Packaging sectors. He had earlier worked in organizations such as Reliance Industries Ltd. and IndoRama Synthetics. He works on new project planning & implementation, product development, quality control and testing, technology indigenization, market research & intelligence.

Dr. Chakravarty has worked on various innovative assignments. As technical consultant he had produced Thermoplastic Starch (TPS) first time in India on an industrial scale with his clients. TPS has been compounded with PBAT, PLA, PVOH etc. to make extrusion blown film for various applications. He has assisted various Indian producers of post-consumer recycled PET / HDPE / LDPE / PP resins to obtain US FDA food contact approval. As technical consultant he has worked with Reliance Industries for RelWood™ a rice husk PVC composite material. As technical advisor he had worked to set up the first plant in Bangladesh to recycle waste PET bottles into Polyester Fiber (Re-PSF). As technical consultant he has worked with Uflex Ltd. (one of the largest packaging film manufacturer in India) to produce LDPE & Thermoplastic Starch blend film first time in India and obtained US FDA food contact approval for PCR - PET for use in polyester food packaging films.

At present he is working with various clients on US FDA food contact approval for post-consumer recycled HDPE / PP / LDPE etc. He is also working on various De-inking processes for removing surface printing on flexible packaging films for producing recycled polyolefin resins. He is working on targeted solvent dissolution & precipitation of polymers in multilayer packaging films to produce pure food grade polymers like LDPE / PP / PET. He is working on producing value added products from pyrolysis of waste plastics i.e. conversion of olefins fraction of pyrolysis oil into aldehydes by hydroformylation and further conversion of aldehydes to valuable chemicals such as alcohols, diols, carboxylic acids etc. He is also working on green (bio-based) chemicals, additives and polymers like bio-plasticizer, bio-thermoset plastics, biodegradable hot melt adhesives, biodegradable polymers etc.

Dr Chakravarty has assisted various clients to produce biodegradable compounds (PBAT, PLA, PBS, PBSA, TPS) for extrusion blown films, coating on paper to produce disposable tableware, agricultural mulch films & nursery bags, cling wrap films, stretch wrap films, extruded sheet for thermoformed articles etc. He has carried our project feasibility study to set up Polybutylene Adipate Terephthalate (PBAT) polymer resin production plant in India. As project consultant he was responsible for setting up the largest single location reclaimed rubber manufacturing plant in India. At present he is working on micronized rubber from end-of-life tyres by cryogenic grinding and de-vulcanized rubbers.

He has a patent in his name for the “process for synthesis of a biodegradable film” (Patent no. 551664 dt. 02.05.2022). His clients include companies like Tetra Pak India, Reliance Industries Ltd., Grant Thornton, McKinsey & Co., Boston Consulting, Uflex Ltd., IG Petrochemicals, Pashupati Group, Dalmia Polypro, DS Group, IL&FS as well as a broad spectrum of SMEs in India and abroad. He is technical advisory member of Plastic Packaging Research & Development Centre (PPRDC) a not-for-profit organization for sustainable packaging materials. He has been an executive council member of Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IICHE) – Northern Region. He is member of Institution of Engineers (India), Indian Plastics Institute (IPI) and All India Management Association (AIMA). He is widely traveled and has more than 30 technical and management publications in national & international journals. He has been invited as a speaker to number of conferences / seminars including:

• 27th Indian Engineering Congress (Dec. 2012)
• India Composites Summit & Conference (Oct. 2013)
• International Wood Plastic Composite Conference (Mar. 2014)
• Rubber Industry Seminars at Chennai and Delhi (2014 & 2015) organized by All India Rubber Industries Association (AIRIA)
• GAIL Plast Asia Technical Conference (March 2016)
• Vinyl India 2016 (April, Mumbai)
• Polymer Symposium at Birla Inst. of Tech. & Science, Pilani (March 2016)
• Young Scientists Conclave on Waste to Wealth 2016 Dec., Delhi at National Physical Laboratory organized by Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India
• Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers – April 2019 lecture on ‘Bio-plastics’
• Indian Plastics Institute (IPI), Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) and PHD Chamber of Commerce – April 2019 on ‘Don’t just Recycle but Up-cycle plastics’.
• Department of Medium & Small Industries (MSME), Govt. of India and Industrial Development Inst. – August 2019, ‘Recycling & Upcycling of Plastics’
• CHEMCON 2019, Dec. – Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers & Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi on ‘Corn Starch Blend Compostable Plastics’
• Department of Medium & Small Industries (MSME), Govt. of India and Industrial Development Inst. – Dec. 2019, ‘Bioplastics & Biodegradable Plastics’ Webinar – “Corn Starch based Biodegradable Polymers” organized by Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers (IIChE) on 9th January 2021.
• Lecture presentation “Recycling of Plastics for Food Contact Applications” – Brand Owners Roundtable organized by Plastic Packaging Research & Development Centre (PPRDC) on 14th Dec. 2022 at Radisson Blu, Noida.
• Panel Discussion: Drivers, Challenges, and Barriers to Recycling - Is India Ready? at the 11th Speciality Films & Flexible Packaging Global Summit 2024, Mumbai 30th Sept.