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Surplus Inventory for the Industrial Chemical Community www.magitsurplus.com Best if viewed at 800 x 600 screen resolution |
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Vol 1 No. 4 Online Edition September 12, 1999
Welcome to Volume 1 Number 3 of our World Wide Web based newsletter. Please feel free to e-mail us with your comments, suggestions, submissions for this newsletter, offers of items for sale and requests for items wanted.
ITEMS WANTED
Low Foam surfactants
Alkyl naphthalene sulfonates
Methanol - up to 5% water
Surfactants
THF and NMP - small amounts of water and Gardner 5 color acceptable
CHEMICAL INDUSTRY NEWS
Consolidation again! - Dow and Union Carbide announced a merger, due to close in mid-2000. Union Carbide stock rose almost $20 per share on the announcement. This leaves an opening in the Dow 30 Industrials, and speculation is that Dow will replace Union Carbide on the index. The combined company will be the world's second largest chemical company, surpassing BASF. The "new" Dow will have 17 ethylene plants, eight ethylene oxide plants, a strong position in polyolefins and roughly one-fifth of the North American market for polyethylene. The combined company will have more than $24 billion in annual sales, operating earnings of $3 billion, a market capitalization of $35 billion and assets of over $30 billion. This comes on the heels of other announced mergers in the oil and chemicals sector such as BP Amoco's bid for Atlantic Richfield, Exxon and Mobil, TotalFina and Elf Aquitane, Witco and Crompton & Knowles, Rohm & Haas and Morton, Lyondell and Arco and others. Whew! Chemical & Engineering News, August 9, 1999, pp 4 and Chemical Marketing Reporter, August 9, 1999, pg 1.
For the most up to the minute chemical industry financial news - If you're here you are at least able to connect to the Internet, and if you're alive then you have heard of Yahoo!, the Internet business phenom. We'll reserve comment at this time regarding the realism of their stock price in relation to the usual standards of financial analysis. Nonetheless, they have a good thing going, and their chemical industry news page is the best on the 'net right now. You can visit them at http://biz.yahoo.com/news/chemicals.html . Another good Yahoo! site is their Biz page specific for Chemicals. You can visit it at http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Companies/Chemicals/
COMMENTARY
The US Federal Reserve, as expected, raised interest rates by 0.25 a basis point.
The stock markets have continued their yawing in the 10,500 to 11,500 range of the Dow 30 industrials, rarely moving more than 1% either way on any given day.
What does this mean over the short-term for your business? The recent Fed move of a quarter of a point (and the expected move of another quarter of a point) was, in part, to stem rising inflation early in order to maintain steady growth. Certainly, working capital loan rates must rise due to the Fed rate move. You can reduce your working capital loan costs by reducing your dead inventory, overstock and surplus, turning the inventory into cash. This will reduce your loan requirements and interest burdens and increase cash flow. Remember, that surplus inventory on the floor is consuming your cash flow. Call us or visit our web site at Available and send us a description of your list of dead, surplus or obsolete inventory.
In an environment of soft prices and rising materials costs it is even more important to save money on raw materials. Remember, the most leveraged area to save on costs, and thus increase profit, is on the materials purchased side of operations. Even spot buys of small quantities can add to the bottom line. We have in stock many materials in good to excellent condition, often in sealed drums, ready to ship to meet your requirements. Many of these materials are on-spec, but simply are aged or labeled with the name of a company which has been acquired, was in warehouse stock at the time of the change and/or was packaged with the acquired company's color scheme. Chem-Find can be relied upon to provide quality surplus chemicals priced as low as pennies on a dollar! See our current mailer at Wanted and our current physical inventory list at www.thechemfinder.com to see what we have in our current offerings.
THE LIGHTER SIDE
