T h e Chemical W o r l d T h i s W e e k INDUSTRY & BUSINESS
CONCENTRATES
• Allied Chemical's sales and earnings jumped to an ail time high for the quarter ending June 30. Earnings increased from 83 to 87 cents a share and sales from $203.4 million to $216.9 million compared with the second quarter of last year. For the first six months of this year, the company's sales were 8% ahead of the same period in 1959. Allied says demand for nitrogen fertilizers was strong and sales of uranium hexafluoride, Caprolactam and Caprolan nylon fibers, pigments, and aerosol propellants and refrigerants showed gains over the 1959 quarter. • Hercules Powder plans to build an emulsifier plant in Australia. The plant will go up at Springvale, Victoria, near Melbourne, and will be in operation by 1961. It will produce the company's line of Dresinate rosin based emulsifiers used in synthetic rubber. Hercules has set up a long term sales contract with Australian Synthetic Rubber Co., Australia's major producer of synthetic rubber. Actual production will be handled by Hercules Powder Co. (Australia) Pty., Ltd., owned jointly by Hercules and A. C. Hatrick Pty., Ltd., of Australia. Hercules also plans to build a rosin derivatives plant in the Netherlands (C&EN, April 25, page 27) and a rosin size and paper chemicals plant in Sweden (C&EN, April 18, page 47). •
JULY 18, 1960
Mexico should have a big, new industrial halides plant in operation early next year.
Allied Chemical's General Chemical division says it is "providing technical information" to Celulosa y Derivados, S.A., for making hydrofluoric acid, carbon tetrachloride, and fluorinated hydrocarbons. The Mexican company will own and operate the plants. Allied says it has no financial interest in the project. H F is now produced in Mexico in only small quantities; the other chemicals are not now being made there. According to Celulosa, its new operation will be large enough to supply all Mexican needs as well as permit marketing throughout Latin America. • Another expansion in electrolytic manganese is in the works· American Potash, already a producer of manganese dioxide, will build a 10 million pound-per-year electrolytic manganese plant near Aberdeen, Miss., adjacent to its sodium chlorate plant on the Tombigbee River. Construction of the $5 million facility will start this fall; completion is set for late 1961. Earlier this
month, Foote Mineral said it was planning a new 20 million pound-a-year electrolytic manganese plant at New Johnsonville, Tenn., and Union Carbide Metals said it was boosting manganese capacity 20% to 15 million pounds annually at Marietta, Ohio (C&EN, July 4, page 17). •
Imperial Chemical Industries will build a $16 million polyethylene plant in Argentina. The
plant will use ICI's high pressure process and will be built near San Lorenzo by ICI's Argentine subsidiary, Industrias Quimicas Argentinas "Duperial," S.A. Initial capacity: 10,000 tons a year. Argentine refineries will supply the raw material, a light petroleum distillate, for the plant. About a year ago, Duperial decided to spend over $6 million to develop a new industrial site at San Lorenzo where construction is now under way on a sulfuric acid unit and other chemical plants. • General Aniline & Film may ask the U.S. Tariff Commission to investigate duties on azoics
and Naphthol AS and its derivatives. GAF feels that the 1951 cut in duties on these products may be causing serious injury to domestic producers. At the Tariff Commission's trade hearings (preliminary to the upcoming GATT talks) in Washington last week, GAF said imports of these products had increased from 22,485 pounds in 1951 to 940,436 pounds last year. The USTC could begin investigating on its own, if it thinks a duty increase is needed. Many azoic intermediates are listed as subject to tariff cuts in the GATT negotiations (see page 32 for more on GATT). GAF also told the Tariff Commission it fears any cuts in duty on a number of acetylene based chemicals, including pyrrolidoiie compounds, may prevent the company from realizing a satisfactory return on its. Calvert City, Ky., plant, which might show a slight profit this year. • Archer-Daniels-Midland calls it quits for linseed oil processing. It will close its one remaining linseed oil manufacturing plant in Minneapolis by the end of the year. The mill was ADM's first linseed oil plant. Parts of the plant still in operation date back to 1902. Competition from synthetic and other natural oils, such as soybean, makes continued operation uneconomical, ADM explains. Since World War II, ADM has closed nine other linseed oil mills. The company will continue to buy and market the oil, however. JULY
18,
1960
C&EN
27
