Teknor Apex Co. has sold its PVC colorant business to Breen Color Concentrates Inc. for an undisclosed price.
The sale includes formulations and customer lists used to make PVC colorants at a Teknor plant in Attleboro, Mass., but does not include any equipment or real estate, officials with Pawtucket, R.I.-based Teknor said in a March 11 news release.
Teknor will continue to use the Attleboro site and its rail access for offloading chemicals. The site, located less than five miles from Teknor's Pawtucket headquarters, is the company's oldest. Teknor has made color products in Attleboro since the late 1970s and had used the site for various company projects well before then, a company spokesman said. No employee data for the site was available.
Lambertville, N.J.-based Breen is owned by investment firm Spell Capital LLC of Minneapolis. After adding the Teknor business, Breen will operate as East Coast Colorants. Spell has bought and sold several plastic properties over the years and currently owns six related businesses.
In February, Spell sold the flexible PVC compounding business of PVC Compounders LLC. Spell closed plants in Kendallville and Marion, Ind.; and El Paso, Texas as a result.
Teknor's other color plants — in Henderson, Ky., and Jacksonville, Texas — are unaffected by the sale, officials said. Last month, Teknor completed a $1 million expansion in Henderson that included constructing a 5,000-square-foot building, installating a new production line and streamlining existing capacity. Those projects created six jobs in Henderson, officials said.
The company will continue to provide the wire and cable market with colorants for resins other than PVC, the spokesman said.
In December, Teknor also signed an exclusive global license to make and market starch-based bioplastics using tech- nology provided by Cerestech Inc. of Montreal. The products now are being made on a pilot-scale line in Pawtucket.
At NPE2009 in Chicago, Teknor will introduce new thermoplastic vulcanizate elastomers with improved surface properties and processability. The materials will be sold under the Telcar OBC name and are based on Infuse-brand olefinic block copolymers under license from Dow Chemical Co. The new TPVs will be aimed at door and window seals, appliance seals and gaskets and a number of consumer products.
Teknor employs 2,000 at 12 plants worldwide. The firm ranks as one of North America's 30 largest compounders, according to a Plastics News estimate.