The Chemical World This Week INDUSTRY & BUSINESS
JANUARY
3 1,
1966
CONCENTRATES
• W. R. Grace's Davison Chemical division has entered specialty dye producing. The company is making a complete line of liquid, powdered, and granulated dyes at Detroit, Mich. The dyes are available in all standard colors as well as in matched colors to meet customer requirements. Initial applications of the dyes include towel dyeing, petroleum dyes, food and beverage coloring, and metal-marking inks. Davison says that the specialty dye business is not troubled by imports, as is most of the dye industry, and that there is a definite market for its products.
investigating ways of changing the present American selling price technique of imposing duties on competitive benzenoid chemical imports (C&EN, Jan. 3, page 16). In a memorandum filed with the Tariff Commission, the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association says that its member companies doubt that any valid equivalent ad valorem duties based upon export value can be determined for ASP. While pledging its full cooperation, SOCMA reserves the right to take exception to the entire concept of the investigation in the future. ^ The U.S. will have more EPT rubber capacity
• Two Dutch chemical firms will build a large vinyl chloride plant in the Netherlands. DSM
(Staatsmijnen) and Koninklijke Zout-Ketjen, N.V., are setting up a joint company to make the monomer and polyvinyl chloride at Limbourg. The 200 million pound-per-year vinyl chloride plant, to be in operation by mid-1968, will use the ethylene dichloride route. DSM will supply ethylene from its naphtha crackers at Beek; the chlorine will come from KZK's installations at Hengelo and Botlek. Shell Nederland Chemie, the country's other vinyl chloride and PVC producer, is building a new PVC plant at Pemis, due to be in operation in the first half of 1967. Capacity of the Pernis PVC plants will then be 154 million pounds a year. • Enjay Chemical is increasing its benzene capacity to 140 million gallons a year. Construction has begun on a plant costing more than $8 million at Baton Rouge, La. The 50 million
gallon-a-year unit will be completed in 1967. Enjay Chemical makes benzene at Baton Rouge
and at Baytown, Tex. • Commercial Solvents and Reichhold Chemicals have ended merger negotiations. Earlier, the two firms said a merger had been approved in principle by the directors of both firms (C&EN, Dec. 20, 1965, page 19). Reichhold's vice president, H. W. Mason, Jr., now says the two firms "couldn't get together on the terms." If the merger had been successful, it would have created a $200 million operation in terms of sales. •
SOCMA has some serious doubts that an adequate substitute can be found for ASP (American selling price). The Tariff Commission is
when Copolymer Rubber & Chemical builds its $10 million plant in West Baton Rouge Parish, La. The plant, which will make "a new and improved" ethylene-propylene terpolymer, will be completed in 1967. Capacity will be 55 million pounds a year. Copolymer Rubber & Chemical is owned by Armstrong Rubber, Gates Rubber, Mansfield Tire & Rubber, Sears, Roebuck, and Seilon, Inc. (For more on EPT, see page 14.) t Sinclair plans to build a large fertilizer complex at Muscatine, Iowa. The complex will turn out 1000 tons a day of anhydrous ammonia and 1500 tons a day of chemically mixed fertilizers. The Iowa complex is part of a $56 million expansion program planned for Sinclair's petrochemical and fertilizer business. Both manufacturing and marketing facilities at Muscatine are expected to be in operation by the end of 1967. ^ A new paraformaldehyde plant will be built by Heyden division of Tenneco Chemicals. The plant, which will have a capacity oi 35 million
pounds a year of 9 1 % paraformaldehyde, will be located at the division's site in Fords, N.J. Process research and plant design have been completed. Heyden expects to start up early in 1967. ^ Another 8 million cubic feet a day of hydrogen will be available to Sun Oil for making ammonia at its Marcus Hook, Pa., refinery. The hydrogen will come from a new $9 million catalytic reformer that the company will put into operation at the end of 1967. Although the company has no plans to increase the capacity of its 350 ton-a-day ammonia plant, it says that the new hydrogen source will give flexibility in the operation of other crackers at Marcus Hook. JAN.
31, 1966
C&EN
7
