Tony Gaukroger has over 50 years’ experience in colouring thermoplastics and producing colour and additive concentrates, in technical, commercial and production roles. Although his career started in thermoplastic coating polymers, he has for the last 40 years has been involved with masterbatches, predominantly colour, for use in thermoplastics.  

After several technical and commercial roles at various levels with Plascoat, Begg and Co., and then Colloids Ltd, he was appointed as the General Manager of Masterplast UK Ltd.  [subsequently a Hoechst subsidiary] manufacturing masterbatches in the UK, for which he was responsible from start up to becoming a multimillion-pound business.

In 1996 he formed Colourtone Masterbatch Ltd., one of the largest, privately owned, independent masterbatch producer in the UK. The company is renowned for providing innovative colouring solutions for most commodity and engineering polymers, with a high level of service and technical support. The company developed the unique, patented and globally acclaimed Vynacol masterbatch for PVCu which won them the "Innovative Company of the Year" award in 2004. The company exports over 20% of its output worldwide. In February 2017 Colour Tone Masterbatch was acquired by technical compounder Luxus. The two companies had enjoyed a 20-year working relationship prior to the acquisition. Tony has continued to work with Colourtone since the takeover.

More recent developments include the developing and patenting novel of colouring systems for the automatic sorting of post-consumer plastic mixed plastic waste, using colourants [particularly black] that do not inhibit the NIR scanning and sorting of waste back into its primary polymer types. Also, the developing of "cool" plastics to reduce the effect of solar heating on exterior components which reduces their environmental impact and increases their service life.