Company Briefs: Siemens opens manufacturing facility in Florida

Acquisitions, Expansions & Partnerships

Siemens opens manufacturing facility in Florida with Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corporation

Siemens and its partner, Chromalloy Gas Turbine Corporation, opened a new $139 million manufacturing facility in Tampa, Florida. The joint-venture, Advanced Airfoil Components, will manufacture casting components for Siemens gas turbines. According to Siemens, the 210,000-square-foot facility in Hillsborough County will employ 350 workers.

Orion Engineered Carbons to acquire acetylene carbon black manufacturer

Orion Engineered Carbons S.A., a worldwide supplier of carbon black, reached an agreement to acquire acetylene carbon black manufacturer Société du Noir d’Acétylène de l’Aubette (SN2A) from LyondellBasell Industries Holdings B.V. and its French affiliate.

SN2A was founded in 1987 and is headquartered near Marseille, France.

Acetylene black is a specialty carbon black distinguished by its high electrical and thermal conductivity. Lithium-ion batteries and high-end electrical cables are key applications for this material.

Mueller Water Products to acquire pipe couplings manufacturer Krausz Industries

Mueller Water Products Inc. signed an agreement to acquire Krausz Industries, a manufacturer of pipe couplings, grips and clamps for $140 million.

Krausz Industries provides proprietary pipe couplings, grips and clamps under the HYMAX brand for the global water and wastewater industries. The company is headquartered in Tel Aviv, Israel, with manufacturing operations in Israel, distribution facilities in the U.S. and 300 employees worldwide. Krausz had net sales of approximately $43 million in 2017 with approximately 75 percent of its sales generated in North America.

Trescal acquires Boston lab, French assembly tools provider

Trescal, an international specialist in calibration services, acquired Boston-based Diamond Technical Services (DTS) and ACTEAM Industries in France.

DTS, a calibration laboratory employs 23 people and its sales reached $ 2.5 million in 2017.

ACTEAM is a French provider of high-accuracy assembly tools and also provides COFRAC accredited calibration services in torque. The company employs 12 people and its sales reached a turnover of 2.1 million euros in 2017.

Augury, PSG partner to bring predictive analytics to chemical processing

Augury, an AI-based mechanical diagnostics provider, and PSG, a manufacturer of pumps, systems and related flow-control solutions, have partnered to provide customers with data-driven insights about how pumps and the systems they power are managed and maintained.

According to a press release, the partnership will enable existing and future PSG customers to benefit from an increase in efficiency, uptime and resiliency through new services, powered by Augury’s IIoT-enabled continuous diagnostics and predictive analytics technology.

New Investments, Services & Programs

Brightmark Energy invests in plastics-to-fuel technology company

Brightmark Energy, a San Francisco-based renewable energy development company, has acquired a majority interest and invested $10 million in the plastics-to-fuel technology company RES Polyflow.

Brightmark has also invested $47 million in the first commercial-scale plant, to be located in Indiana, that will use this technology.

Based in Ohio, RES Polyflow’s plastics-to-fuel process sustainably recycles waste that has reached the end of its useful life – including items that cannot readily be recycled, like plastic film, flexible packing and children’s toys – directly into products like fuels or wax.

The commercial-scale facility will be located in Ashley, Indiana. It will convert 100,000 tons of plastic waste into 18 million gallons of ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel and naphtha blend stocks and 5 million gallons of wax per year.

Brooks Instrument announces new engineering scholarship

Brooks Instrument, a provider of flow, pressure, vacuum and vapor delivery solutions, has introduced a new engineering scholarship for undergraduate students enrolled in an engineering program at an accredited college or university. The $2,000 scholarship will be awarded based on the candidate’s potential for leadership and his or her interest in engineering with a focus on instrumentation, fluid mechanics and flow or pressure measurement.

The application requirements include a copy of the student’s transcripts, a brief personal essay along with a project review, proposal, lab work or other endeavor that details a process involving instrumentation, flow or measurement.

Applications must be received by Dec. 31. For scholarship details and requirements, visit www.brooksinstrument.com/en/about-us/scholarship.

Madison Chemical launches new website

Madison Chemical unveiled a new website, www.madchem.com, which presents comprehensive information about their formulated cleaning chemicals for the metalworking industry. The site allows users to search for products by application within their specific industry, download technical and safety data sheets, peruse an "industry events" section and read customer testimonials.

New Gearing Solutions website to help streamline product development

Gearing Solutions unveiled a new website, www.gearingsolutions.com. Gearing Solutions offers roller gear technology featuring Nu Lobe gears for more torque in less space. These designs allow the use of aluminum housings, which yield considerable weight savings of up to 50 percent over traditional cast iron housings.

The website offers a Digital Transmission Automated Program (DTAP), which guides users through a series of questions to derive the optimal solution for their particular motion control problem. This engineered-to-order program overcomes lengthy lead times, costly prototyping and expensive short-run manufacturing typically required in product development, according to company officials.

REHAU BIM library for plumbing and mechanical systems available through UNIFI platform

The REHAU BIM library is now available on UNIFI, the BIM content management platform, allowing architectural and engineering firms to design with REHAU PEX, a plumbing and radiant heating/cooling content, directly in Autodesk Revit models.

Subscribers to the cloud-based platform UNIFI Connect can locate and adopt manufacturer content into their internal libraries.

Designers can access the REHAU BIM library through UNIFI at http://unifilabs.com or download files from the REHAU Resource Center at: www.na.rehau.com/bim. Designers who do not already have a UNIFI subscription can request a free trial at unifilabs.com/free-trial.

Milestones & Certifications

Houston Plating & Coatings celebrates 30 years

Houston Plating & Coatings (HP&C), which provides corrosion and wear protection services to equipment manufacturers, is celebrating its 30th anniversary.

HP&C provides its customers with electroless nickel plating, SBN/QPQ (salt bath nitriding), zinc and manganese phosphate, and a wide variety of spray coatings, at its South Houston and Humble, Texas plants.

Bacharach portable combustion analyzers compliant to new AHRI standard

Bacharach Inc., a provider of HVAC-R gas instrumentation and combustion analysis solutions, achieved voluntary compliance with AHRI Standard 1260 for their handheld combustion analyzers.

The recently ratified AHRI Standard 1260 specifies requirements for performance rating of portable flue combustion analyzers measuring specific combustion flue gas products of heating appliances for residential and light commercial applications using fuels including natural gas, propane as well as light and heavy fuel oil.

Arkema’s Kynar polymer processing aids meet official Halal certification requirements 

Arkema’s Calvert City, Kentucky plant has been certified to meet Halal certification requirements by a third-party auditor for Arkema’s Kynar PVDF brand of Polymer Processing Aids (PPA).

Kynar PVDF PPA grades are commonly used to aid in the processing of polyolefins in film production, injection molding, blow molding, wire and cable extrusion, fiber extrusion and tube extrusion. The use of these PPA grades helps in the elimination of melt fracture in processing and can also offer advantages such as equipment pressure reduction, improved gauge control, improved final product clarity, increased production output and reduction of die buildup.

Indegy achieves certification to help detect, respond to cybersecurity threats

Cybersecurity firm Indegy has achieved "RSA Ready" interoperability certification with the RSA NetWitness Platform. This distinction enables organizations to bridge the current visibility gap between enterprise information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) environments. The companies have successfully completed testing that assures customers that both solutions can bidirectionally share information to detect, respond and mitigate security threats across their entire attack surface, including industrial control system (ICS) devices.