Coatings World - April 2009

I ndustry News
Dow, Rohm and Haas settle merger

Dow Chemical and Rohm and Haas settled their disagreement over their already-agreed merger, with Dow saying it will honor the agreement at $78 a share, The Wall Street Journal reported. As we went to press, the deal was set to close on April 1. The chemical firms have been embroiled in a dispute regarding a $15.3 billion merger that was announced last July, but which Dow said in January it wouldn’t be able to complete due to troubles with financing and concerns about the weak economy. In particular, the Kuwaiti government pulled out of a joint venture deal with Dow that was supposed to help with the financing. The companies announced that they were in discussions regarding the merger and the pending litigation, but declined to comment further.

CLARIANT TO OPEN SURFACTANTS
PLANT IN ZHENJIANG, CHINA
Clariant is building a surfactants

plant in Zhenjiang, eastern China. The new facility is scheduled for production in the middle of 2009. The new plant will primarily serve personal care, paints and coatings as well as metal working industries. Other products available at the plant will include chemicals for textile, oil, mining and homecare sectors.

COGNIS OPENS BRANCH
OFFICE IN NEW ZEALAND

Cognis Corp. has opened a branch office in Auckland, New Zealand to manager the marketing and sales of its products in the company. The decision to open the office reflects the significant opportunity to profitably grow Cognis’ existing and new business in New Zealand.

The office will represent the interests of all three of Cognis’ strategic business units, Care Chemicals, Nutrition and Health and Functional Products. It will be responsible for

strengthening relationships with existing customers, identifying and initiating new business opportuniteis and promoting the Cognis brand. A New Zealand market segment manager has been appointed for eash strategic business unit–Peter Gibson for Care Chemicals, Vinod Sarren for Functional Products and Dominic Lobo for Nutrition and Health.

HUBER ON SCHEDULE WITH EU REACH GUIDELINES Huber Engineered Materials, in compliance with the new EU REACH chemicals regulation, has announced as a member of the siica and silicates consortia it has developed the Technical Dossier and Chemical Safety Report to successfully register synthetic amorphous silica with the European Chemicals s Agency in Helsinki, Finland. The substance was registered by the lead registrant by order of the Consortia in the form of a joint submission.

DSM OPENS NEW FACTORY FOR
WATERBORNE ACRYLIC RESINS IN WAALWIJK

DSM has opened a new factory for waterborne acrylic resins in Waalwijk, The Netherlands. Total investment costs amounted to € 30 million.

The opening ceremony for the new factory, which was built at the existing DSM NeoResins+ production site in Waalwijk, was performed by Feike Sijbesma, CEO of DSM, together with Hans Wijers, CEO of AkzoNobel. DSM Resins, the business group that includes DSM NeoResins+, is one of AkzoNobel’s key suppliers of resins used in a broad range of AkzoNobel’s coatings for a variety of end-markets.

The waterborne acrylic resins, which comply with current and future legislation regarding VOCs, are used in coatings for joinery, decorative and industrial wood applications as well as in the graphic arts industry.