Nordson president and CEO Michael Hilton announces retirement

MOSCOW (MRC) -- After nine years at the helm, Nordson Corp. president and CEO Michael F. Hilton has announced his plan to retire by the end of 2019, said Canplastics.

In a statement, the Westlake, Ohio-based maker of precision dispensing equipment for consumer and industrial adhesives, sealants and coatings announced that it has "initiated a search of internal and external candidates for [a] successor," and that Hilton will remain in his current roles throughout that process "to ensure a smooth transition."

During Hilton’s tenure, Nordson grew from USD819 million to USD2.3 billion in sales, the statement said, and he led over 30 transactions at Nordson, including acquisitions that established new product platforms in medical, test and inspection, and flexible packaging.

"Michael has done a tremendous job of diversifying and growing the company through both innovation and acquisition, which has driven the company to record sales and profitability," Michael Merriman, chairman of the Nordson board, said in the statement. “As we look forward, the board intends to identify a leader who will build upon Nordson’s great foundation and further enhance value and opportunities for our employees, customers and shareholders."

Founded in 1954, Nordson has operations and support offices in more than 35 countries.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Praxair, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Linde plc, has authorized the construction of a world scale hydrogen plant in Louisiana to supply product under a long-term contract with a major refinery in the area, as per Hydrocarbonprocessing.

The new plant will be integrated with Praxair’s already extensive Louisiana production network via its Mississippi River Corridor hydrogen pipeline system.

Praxair will build, own and operate the steam methane reformer (SMR), which will have a capacity in excess of 170 million standard cubic feet per day of high-purity hydrogen. The new plant, which is planned to start up in 2021, will be one of the largest hydrogen production units in the US, along with the SMR recently announced by Praxair in Texas.

Linde Engineering has been selected to provide a state-of-the-art process design and to fabricate the core components and modules of the plant. Once complete, this project will increase Praxair’s U.S. Gulf Coast hydrogen capacity to more than 1.7 billion standard cubic feet per day.

"Praxair is committed to be the preferred hydrogen supplier in the U.S. Gulf Coast and this investment further reinforces our strategy to support industrial growth in this vibrant region," said Dan Yankowski, president, Global Hydrogen. "We understand that hydrogen is a critical requirement for our customers and are committed to providing long-term reliability."

Hydrogen is used by petroleum refiners to produce ultra-low-sulfur diesel and other transportation fuels and by chemical companies to manufacture some critical intermediates and specialty chemicals. Demand for clean fuels continues to grow in order to comply with increasingly stringent environmental regulations.

As MRC informed before, in July 2017, Praxair, Inc. announced the start-up of a new air separation plant to supply 700 tons per day of nitrogen to Samsung’s display manufacturing complex in Tangjeong, South Korea.

Praxair, Inc., a Fortune 300 company with 2016 sales of USD11 billion, is a leading industrial gas company in North and South America and one of the largest worldwide. The company produces, sells and distributes atmospheric, process and specialty gases, and high-performance surface coatings. Praxair products, services and technologies are making our planet more productive by bringing efficiency and environmental benefits to a wide variety of industries, including aerospace, chemicals, food and beverage, electronics, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, primary metals and many others.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- Holding firm Westfall Technik Inc. has acquired Precision Injection Molding Co., a Corona, Calif.-based molder of parts for various markets including medical, telecommunication, consumer durables, and light industrials, as per Canplastics.

The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

"Precision Injection Molding] excels at molding complex parts that its customers cannot produce in-house," Westfall said in a statement. "This adds to [our] technical injection molding capabilities for OEMs looking to outsource challenging applications for quality assurance and cost-effectiveness."

The acquisition of Precision Injection Molding is Westfall’s twelfth in sixteen months, and continues what the company calls its "aggressive growth strategy, focused on building the plastic industry’s most comprehensive and vertically integrated solution provider."

Headquartered in Las Vegas, Westfall was founded in 2017 by veteran plastics industry executive Brian Jones.
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MOSCOW (MRC) -- BASF on Tuesday said it would put its pigments business, with about 1 billion euros in sales, on the auction block as it continues to divest lower-margin businesses, said Reuters.

"Our goal is to conclude a transaction by the end of 2020," Chief Executive Martin Brudermueller said at a news conference on the chemical giant’s full-year results.

The unit competes with groups such as Sun Chemical, which in 2003 acquired Bayer’s pigments business.

Swiss peer Clariant earlier this year began the sale of its pigments business under a wider streamlining effort, sources told Reuters at the time.

Private equity groups with a penchant for the chemicals sector are expected to look at BASF unit, some of them with a view to potentially combining it with the Clariant business, people familiar with the sector have said.
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MOSCOW (MRC) - U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said he had been reassured by his counterpart at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that the agency would “very likely” finish its rule allowing year-round sales of higher ethanol blends of gasoline in time for summer driving season, said Hydrocarbonprocessing.

Perdue had told a Congressional hearing earlier in the day that EPA would probably fail to complete the rule in time, something that could have proven a setback for the agriculture industry keen to boost its sales of corn-based ethanol. "Today he told me he thought it was very likely that they could get it done and would do so if at all possible," Perdue told reporters in Washington, referring to EPA Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler.

EPA said in a statement that is was working “expeditiously” to finish the rule by June 1 and would have a draft proposal ready later this month. President Donald Trump had announced in October he was directing the EPA to allow year-round sales of E15 before summer in a win for the powerful corn industry which supplies ethanol.

E15 gasoline contains 15 percent ethanol, versus the 10 percent found in most U.S. gasoline. The summer-time ban had been imposed over concerns that E15 contributes to smog in hot weather, though recent studies have shown its impact on air quality may not be significantly different than E10. The EPA had initially planned to release a draft of the rule in early February but ran into delay due to the 35-day partial government shutdown that began in late December.

The rule is also meant to include simultaneous measures the EPA promised the oil industry to curb speculation of biofuel credits, known as Renewable Identification Numbers or RINs. Under the U.S. Renewable Fuels Standard, oil refiners have to blend increasing volumes of biofuels into the nation’s gasoline and diesel each year, or purchase RINS from those who do.

Oil companies have complained speculation in the credit market has inflated prices and cost them hundreds of millions of dollars - one of a long list of complaints by the industry about U.S. biofuel policy. Biofuel backers have argued that coupling E15 with the more complicated trading reforms have slowed things down.

"We have no doubt that the so-called RIN reforms sought by oil refiners are bogging this rulemaking down. Thus, I reiterate the request we formally made last month to split RIN reform and year-round E15 into two separate rulemakings and expedite the E15 rule," Geoff Cooper, head of the Renewable Fuel Association said.
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