Elements
Staff -- Purchasing, 4/6/2006 6:00:00 AM
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Arch Chemicals says 2006 sales will improve 6-8% over 2005, fueled mostly by its HTH water products business. This business expects results to improve through a combination of price increases, improved customer and sales mix, cost reductions and the recently acquired Nordesclor operation.
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Syngenta and DuPont, competitors in the specialty agricultural chemical industry, have signed an agreement to swap licenses to key crop protection products, allowing each to use the other's technology to grow their markets. Some analysts say the deal is also a sign that, after a period of consolidation in the industry, global players such as Syngenta are looking for ways to grow their businesses. Agricultural chemical makers have been hit by increased costs, advances in genetically modified seeds and other factors changing the landscape of the crop protection industry.
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Dow Chemical has signed a joint venture agreement with BASF to build a new propylene oxide manufacturing facility using a recently co-developed technology called HPPO (for hydrogen peroxide route to propylene oxide). The 300,000 metric ton/year HPPO plant in Antwerp, Belgium, has startup planned for early 2008.
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LINQ Industrial Fabrics has been purchased from American Industrial Partners by Sun Capital Partners, a private investment firm. LINQ is a global supplier of highly engineered woven and nonwoven polypropylene-based fabric products, including proprietary and technical fabrics.
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Cargill now is selling commercial volumes of bio-based polyols to large flexible polyurethane foam manufacturers.
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Lord Corp. is purchasing the Henkel Technologies' chemicals business for bonding rubber to metal and other substrates. Henkel says the business isn't a core strategy since it requires global marketing. To date, Henkel has concentrated primarily on the European automotive market with this activity.
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United Plastics Group has opened its second Monterrey, Mexico, facility in response to a dramatic rise in demand by Fortune 100, Tier One automotive and consumer product customers for full-service custom manufacturing of precision plastics products.
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BASF is building an alkyl ethanolamine plant at its integrated manufacturing facility in Geismar, La. The new plant, scheduled to come online in 2007, complements existing amine production facilities at Geismar, which make 20 different specialty amines. The new plant will raise the German company's worldwide production capacities for these important intermediates by about 40%.
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The business and operating assets of Mercury Plastics'Bowling Green, Ky., facility has been acquired by AEP Industries of South Hackensack, N.J. The buyout will allow AEP to expand its range of plastic packaging products for the food/beverage, industrial and agricultural markets.
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Reichhold and Ennis Paint have created Innovative Performance Systems, a joint venture making roadway marking materials based on epoxy, modified-urethane and poly-urea materials. Ennis Paint has been toll manufacturing high-performance roadway marking products for Reichhold since 2002.
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