Austin Chemical does just fine, even without the bionic capabilities of Steve or the accessibility to great barbecue of the capital of Texas. The company supplies excipients, intermediates, APIs (active pharmaceutical ingredients), and specialty chemicals to the pharmaceutical, nutritional, and agrochemical industries. It also provides development, packaging, marketing, and logistical services. The company supplies more than 8,000 products from some 115 manufacturers. In addition to its Chicago-area headquarters, Austin Chemical maintains operations in China and India.

Spartech Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, operates as an intermediary processor of engineered thermoplastics in North America and Europe. The company’s Custom Sheet and Rollstock segment manufactures plastic sheets, custom rollstocks, laminates, and cell cast acrylic for use in various applications, including packaging, transportation, building and construction, recreation and leisure, electronics and appliances, signs/advertising, and aerospace markets. Its Packaging Technologies segment manufactures plastic packages and rollstocks primarily used in the food and consumer product markets.The company’s Color and Specialty Compounds segment manufactures custom-designed plastic alloys, compounds, color concentrates, and calendered film for utilization by various manufacturing customers servicing the automotive, building and construction, food/medical packaging, lawn and garden, and electronics and appliances sectors. Spartech Corporation also manufactures various products, including thermoplastic tires and wheels for the medical, lawn and garden, refuse container, and toy markets; profile window frames and fencing for the building and construction market; and doors, hatches, cabinets, and windscreens for boat manufacturers. The company sells its products primarily to original equipment manufacturers through its sales force, as well as through independent sales representatives and wholesale distributors. Spartech was founded in 1947 and is headquartered in Clayton, Missouri.

Solvay Indupa manufactures and distributes PVC (polyvinyl chloride) resin used in the manufacture of a broad range of industrial and consumers goods; end products include flooring, footwear, packaging materials, pipes, and coatings for wire and cable. The company produces its PVC, sold under the SolVin brand, as well as other chemical products (sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, and hypochlorite) at plants in Argentina and Brazil. Solvay Indupa's annual output of PVC resin totals more than 260,000 tons. The company is a subsidiary of Brussels-based chemical and pharmaceutical maker Solvay Group.

Valhi, Inc is a Delaware corporation that has operations through majority-owned subsidiaries or less than majority-owned affiliates. Valhi’s common stock is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “VHI.” See the disclosure in Valhi’s latest Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Report on Form 10Q and Proxy Statement (see the SEC Filings section of this website) for a recent description of Valhi’s operations and ownership structure.Valhi Inc. is considered a controlled company under the listing standards of the New York Stock Exchange. Pursuant to the listing standards, a controlled company may choose not to have a majority of independent directors, independent compensation, nominating or corporate governance committees or charters for these committees. Valhi has chosen not to have a majority of independent directors or an independent nominating or corporate governance committee.

Salt has preserved K+S (for Kali und Salz) for more than a century. Founded in 1889 to mine salt, K+S gets more than 40% of its sales from potash, which is extracted from salt and used in fertilizers. The company also produces salt used for industrial purposes (such as making glass), as well as for deicing roads and cooking. K+S is Germany's top salt producer and supplies about 12% of the world's potash. In addition, the company recycles waste materials and provides underground waste disposal services. In 2009 the company helped Dow pay for its acquisition of Rohm and Haas by agreeing to buy Morton Salt for about $1.7 billion. The deal makes K+S the world's #1 salt producer.

Solutia Inc. manufactures and markets various chemical and engineered materials used in the consumer and industrial applications worldwide. The company operates in three segments: Saflex, CPFilms, and Technical Specialties. The Saflex segment produces polyvinyl butyral (PVB) sheet, a plastic interlayer used in the manufacture of laminated glass for automotive and architectural applications; specialty intermediate PVB resin products; and optical grade PVB resin and plasticizer. The CPFilms segment manufactures and sells special custom coated window films under Llumar, Vista, Gila, and Formula One Performance Automotive Films brand names; and produces various films for use in tapes, automotive badging, optical and colored filters, shades, packaging, computer touch screens, electroluminescent displays, and cathode ray tube and flat-panel monitors. The Technical Specialties segment manufactures and sells chemicals for the rubber industry, which include vulcanizing agents, principally insoluble sulfur, and rubber chemicals, such as antidegradants, accelerators, and other rubber chemicals; heat transfer fluids used for indirect heating or cooling of chemical processes in various types of industrial equipment, as well as in solar energy power systems; and aviation hydraulic fluids and aviation solvents used in the aviation industry. Solutia sells its products directly to end users in various industries through a sales force and distributors. The company was founded in 1901 and is headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri.

Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. began with the coming together of Nagano Prefecture's (Shinano-area) water and Niigata Prefecture's (Echigo-area) limestone. Nagano Prefecture's plentiful water give birth to electric power and the limestone that came from Niigata Prefecture was a key raw material, which was called, "Oyashirazu's great earth." Because of the presence of these two gifts of nature, Shin-Etsu Nitrogen Fertilizer Co., Ltd. was founded on September, 1926 to manufacture chemical fertilizer and limestone nitrogen.The history of Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd. began from this point.The company's "Shin" comes from Shinano and "Etsu" is taken from Echigo.

From poisoning garden pests to exfoliating dry skin, Lonza puts itself in the middle of things. As the US operations of its parent company, Lonza accounts for about a third of the Lonza Group's $2.5 billion in annual sales. While Lonza doesn't actually make consumer products, the company provides chemical ingredients and intermediates for the personal care, water treatment, pharmaceutical, and plastics industries, from its nine manufacturing and R&D locations throughout the US.

Lydall, Inc. designs and manufactures specialty engineered products for the thermal/acoustical, filtration/separation, and biopharmaceutical markets. It operates in two segments, Thermal/Acoustical and Performance Materials. The Thermal/Acoustical segment offers automotive thermal and acoustical barriers, including organic and inorganic fiber composites, fiber and metal combinations, and metal components that are used in cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles, and vans. The Performance Materials segment provides filtration and separation media solutions for air, fluid power, industrial, and life science applications; and industrial thermal insulation solutions for building products, appliances, cryogenics, energy, and industrial markets. It also develops non-woven veils, papers, mats, and specialty composites for the building products, appliance, energy, and industrial markets. In addition, the company offers specialty products for blood transfusion and cell therapy applications in the life science industry, as well as single-use bioprocessing containers for containment of media, buffers, and bulk intermediates used in biotech, pharmaceutical, and diagnostic reagent manufacturing processes.Further, it offers medical filter materials products utilized in traditional blood filtration devices, such as cardiotomy reservoirs and autotransfusion filters, as well as designs and manufactures high precision, specialty engineered temperature-control equipment for semiconductor, pharmaceutical, life sciences, and industrial applications. Lydall, Inc. sells its products to original equipment manufacturers and tier-one suppliers in the United States, Mexico, Canada, Europe, and Asia. The company was founded in 1913 and is based in Manchester, Connecticut.

Japan's oldest paint company is also its largest. Founded in 1881, Nippon Paint produces paints and coatings for makers of automobiles (one of the company's major markets), industrial products, and ships. It also makes paints for residential and commercial buildings and for the do-it-yourself market. Nippon Paint's fine chemicals unit produces adhesives, as well as surface treatment chemicals. The company's manufacturing operations are located principally in Asia, but also in North America and Europe. In the US, Nippon Paint makes automotive coatings and powder coatings through Nippon Paint (USA). The influx of auto makers into China bodes well for the company's already strong automotive division.

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