Industrial gas market expands

By Staff -- Purchasing, 5/3/2007

In the wake of its acquisition of BOC Group, Linde is selling off pieces of the newly combined businesses. Airgas will acquire a significant part of the U.S. packaged gas business of Linde. And part of the BOC Edwards subsidiary is being sold to private equity firm CCMP Capital.

Air Products & Chemicals plans to build a new hydrogen production facility in Garyville, La. with a capacity of 120 million standard cubic feet per day coming online in 2009.

Air Liquide will construct new plant in Trinidad and Tobago with a capacity of 720 tons a day of gaseous oxygen and 1,500 tons per day of gaseous nitrogen. The company said the new plant will be operational in the middle of 2009.

Praxair recently said it will double the current storage capacity and increase daily production capacity by 150 tons at its Kirtland, N.M. facility.

Air Products & Chemicals also completed a new plant in China to supply nitrogen for InfoVision Optoelectronics, a Chinese maker of flat-panel displays. Air Products said the new plant will supply nitrogen to the company under a long term contract. Financial details of the contract were not disclosed. The plant, which was designed and built locally, is located at the InfoVision Optoelectronics factory in Kunshan, Jiangsu Province.