INDUSTRY THIS WEEK IN BRIEF
N e w construction Reilly Tar & Chemical, Indianapolis, lnd.? has started con struction that will boost its capacity for pyridine and a- and β-picoline to a total of about 2 million pounds per month. The expansion will more than double present capacity. Completion is slated for early 1968. M & R Refractory Metals, Inc., has opened a plant in Winslow, N.J., for pyrometallurgical and chemical treatment of the ore concentrates of molybdenum, tungsten, and vana dium. Basic capacity of the molybdenum operation is about 1.6 million pounds per year. The Winslow plant's output will go to the Springfield, N.J., plant, which has recently doubled reduction facilities for making molybde num and tungsten powders and pellets. The metals are used as melting additions by vacuum and alloy steel pro ducers. Kennecott Copper has started building a 750 ton-per-day contact sulfuric acid plant at Hayden, Ariz. The plant will use sulfur dioxide from the copper smelter there. Leonard Construction will do the engineering and design. Kenne cott has similar plants at its smelter near Salt Lake City (C&EN, March 20, page 59). Construction at Hayden is to be completed next March. Chemetron Corp.'s National Cylinder Gas division will double its nitrogen capacity at Dallas, Tex. The expansion is to be completed by July 1968. The on-site plant serves Texas Instruments. Capacity for ultrahigh-purity hydro gen was increased in an expansion completed in December. Du Pont will increase capacity for Elvanol polyvinyl alcohol by about 2 5 % at its Niagara Falls, N.Y., plant. The proj ect will be complete about July 1. A further boost in capacity is to be completed in late 1968. Present capac ity has not been revealed.
Corporate Olin Mathieson has acquired Somers Brass Co., Inc., Waterbury, Conn., for an undisclosed amount of Olin stock. Somers will continue operations as a wholly owned subsidiary of Olin, but be renamed Somers Thin Strip, Inc. Chief products of Somers are thin-gage-strip copper, brass, nickel, nickel alloys, and stainless steels. The company also owns 5 0 % of Laminated SKim/Somers Thin Strip, Inc., Glendale, Calif. Isochem, Inc., a subsidiary of Martin Marietta and Uniroyal, has made a firm offer to the Atomic Energy Com mission for an option to purchase the idle Redox chemical processing plant at Hanford, Wash. The offer is part of Isochem's proposal to continue as operator of AEC's chem ical separation facilities. Commercial fuel cycle studies completed by Isochem, Uniroyal, and Martin Marietta indi 50 C&EN JUNE 12, 1967
cate that establishment of a commercial fuels reprocess ing plant at Hanford is feasible. Mobil Chemical has sold its trade sales paint business to Minnesota Paints, Inc. The price was not disclosed. The transaction includes two paint manufacturing plants in Kansas City, Mo. Mobil has 13 chemical coatings plants in the U.S. and interests in eight plants abroad. Its coat ings business was purchased from Martin Marietta in May 1963. Minnesota Paints has manufacturing plants in Minneapolis, Minn., Fort Wayne, Ind., and Atlanta, Ga.
Markets Union Carbide's marketing research department predicts that U.S. and Canadian aerosol production in 1975 will total nearly 3.7 million units, double the 1966 output. Last year, the department's projection for 1975 output was about 800,000 units higher than the present projec tion. The lower expectation, the company says, is due to a lack of any major new product introductions in the past few years and to a trend toward larger size aerosol units. Carbide expects that, among nonfood aerosols, deodorants and antiperspirants will show the greatest growth, 175% or 517 million units by 1975. It expects food aerosol output to reach 258 million units by 1975, up 2 6 0 % . Du Pont's Corfam poromeric material will be available this fall in retail outlets other than footwear. Thirty-two manufacturers will offer Corfam products, including lug gage, watch straps, small personal goods (key cases and wallets), golf bags, business cases, handbags, belts, and inner comfort bands of men's hats.
International Badische, Bayer, and Hoechst, West Germany's big three, all show consolidated first-quarter sales above 1966 fig ures. Badische's consolidated sales of $322 million reflect a 14.3% rise over the same period in 1966. Its profit after taxes was $17.3 million, up 7.8%. Bayer showed consolidated sales of $369 million, an increase of 4 . 2 % , while profits after taxes were down from the 1966 period's $19 million to $17.8 million. Hoechst says only that its consolidated sales for the quarter were 9 % above those in the first quarter of 1966. Sumitomo Chiba Chemical Co., Ltd., a wholly owned sub sidiary of Sumitomo Chemical Co., Ltd., has started up a naphtha cracking plant in Ichihara City, near Tokyo. Pres ent annual capacity is 100,000 metric tons of ethylene and 60,000 metric tons of high-pressure polyethylene. Capacity will eventually be expanded to 120,000 metric tons of ethylene. Scheduled for future production are 30,000 metric tons of polypropylene and 18,000 metric tons of polyvinyl chloride per year.
