ACC appoints Jack Gerard to top post
ARLINGTON, VA. - The American Chemistry Council announced March 23 that it has tapped Jack Gerard, a mining industry lobbyist and longtime Washington political figure, to head the group.
Gerard, president of the National Mining Association, will take over July 1 as president and chief executive of Arlington-based ACC. He succeeds Tom Reilly, a chemical industry executive who ran ACC on an interim basis after former CEO Greg Lebedev left abruptly in mid-2004 amid turmoil in the group.
ACC praised Gerard's Washington background and noted how he had reorganized NMA and boosted its membership. ACC said Gerard's priorities will include security, energy and defending attacks on chemicals.
NMA said he boosted that group's government profile, tripling its political contributions and building grass-roots support and communications capabilities. Gerard, who took over at NMA in 2000, also ``solidified'' the merger of NMA's two predecessor groups, NMA said in a news release.
Before his tenure at NMA, Gerard was a founding partner, along with former Sen. James McClure, R-Idaho, of Washington lobbying firm McClure, Gerard & Neuenschwander Inc., and worked as an aide to McClure when he was in the Senate, from 1985-90.
ACC includes the American Plastics Council.
Alcan to add packaging site in China
MONTREAL - Alcan Inc. will open a plastics injection molding and aluminum fabricating plant in China in the third quarter to make personal-care packaging.
The Suzhou, China, plant sits on a 25-acre site, but will only occupy a small portion of that to start, the company said. The plant initially will make cosmetic containers.
The Montreal-based company currently has plants in 55 countries, including 12 in Asia. Alcan reported sales of $24.9 billion in 2004.
DSM ups China compounding capacity
EVANSVILLE, IND.- DSM Engineering Plastics will double its compounding capacity in China with the construction of a new plant in Jiangyin.
The new plant, set to open in 2006, will have two new compounding lines and will produce compounds based on Stanyl-brand and Akulon-brand nylons and Arnite-brand polyesters. Markets served by those compounds include automotive, electrical and electronics.
DSM also will relocate existing compounding equipment, as well as a regional service center, from Zhouzhuang to Jiangyin. Equipment being relocated also will receive a ``major technological upgrade,'' said DSM officials, who described investment in the new site as ``tens of millions'' of dollars.
Evansville-based DSM is a unit of DSM NV of Heerlen, the Netherlands.
Die maker Premier moves to new plant
CHIPPEWA FALLS, WIS. - Premier Dies Corp., a 4-year-old maker of flat dies, has quadrupled its space by moving from an industrial incubator into its own factory.
``Our target is high-precision dies,'' said President Steve Jonjak.
He pegged the investment at $2 million to $2.5 million for the 45,000-square-foot building in Chippewa Falls, plus about $200,000 for a new grinder and other equipment.
Before the February move, Premier Dies had 11,000 square feet of space in Eau Claire, Wis.
Jonjak and other top officials of Premier Dies, who each have more than 20 years of experience in flat dies, founded the company in 2001, after they left another die-maker, Production Components Valley Die Inc. of Eau Claire. Cloeren Co. of Orange, Texas, had purchased Production Components in 1997.
Today Premier Dies employs 27. Jonjak declined to give sales.
``We're small and we're growing fast,'' Jonjak said.
Premier Dies manufactures flat dies for making cast film and sheet, slot dies used for extrusion coating and to produce adhesive labels, dies to extrude vinyl siding, strand dies for pelletizing, custom specialty dies and coextrusion feed blocks.
