Start-up plastic manufacturing company Octal (www.octal.com) was ready to begin unveiling plans for its new APET plastic manufacturing facility and proprietary process in 2007 in order to begin pre-booking sales. The company's managing director, Nick Barakat, turned to Henry Feintuch and his integrated public relations and marketing team to plan the company's launch on a global stage.

Mr. Feintuch, who had worked with Mr. Barakat when he was a product manager at International Paper, swung into action in mid-2007.

While a photo shoot was scheduled at the new plant in Oman, the design team jumped in and created a unique company logo and corporate identity, built Octal's Web site, developed brochures and marketing material and created a trade show booth for the company's planned launch at the SPE conference in September of that year.

Working with Octal management, they positioned its APET plastic, a fully recyclable material, as the finest quality in the world and ideal to meet the growing demand for this substrate in the consumer product packaging segment. The PR strategy was to leverage plant construction milestones with the media while negotiating an exclusive cover story with key industry trade Plastics News. Octal was the hit of the Cincinnati SPE conference; more than 100 articles appeared globally in the week following the launch in all key global markets (with the help of Feintuch's ECP Global network). Numerous sales leads and partnership inquiries resulted.

In mid-2008, the Feintuch team and Octal hit another major success at the Interpack show in Dusseldorf, Germany. The company conducted more than two dozen in-booth interviews. Prospects visited the Octal booth in droves citing news coverage, emails and tremendous buzz in the market. The company's new plant sold out its capacity months in advance of opening.