Troester Machinery Ltd. and ESI form joint venture.

Troester Machinery, Ltd. and ESI, Extrusion Services, Inc., have formed a joint venture company that will offer single-source convenience in creating complete lines of machines for the industrial rubber profile, tubing and hose markets. The new company, called Troester-ESI, Ltd., will market and sell complete rubber extrusion lines, from the extruder through the finished coil or cut length product, and will provide the necessary start-up, training and technical services for these lines. Troester Machinery, Ltd. is the U.S. subsidiary of Paul Troester Maschinenfabrik, based in Hanover, Germany, a worldwide manufacturer of complete lines of wire and cable insulation, tire components, profiles and hoses, and seals, gaskets and conveyor belts. At its 25,000 sq. ft. facility in Akron, OH, ESI designs and manufactures a complete line of standard and custom downstream equipment for extrusion processing, including vacuum and calibration sizing tanks, continuous rubber curing systems, cooling and rinse systems, pullers and conveyors, on-line fabrication units, cutters and saws, and windups and coilers. ESI also provides turnkey extrusion systems worldwide. Outside the 50/50 joint venture, both Troester Machinery, Ltd. and ESI will continue to individually serve their non-industrial rubber extrusion markets - ESI in plastic profile, pipe, tube, hose and wood composite, and Troester in tire, wire and cable, and sheet markets. Neither company has an t ownership stake in the other.

Bridgestone/Firestone Truck Tire Sales (BFTT), Nashville, TN, has been awarded preferred supplier status by PACCAR, the parent company of Kenworth Truck, Peterbilt Motors, Kenworth Mexicana, Kenworth Australia, DAF Trucks, Leyland Truck and PACCAR Leasing. The PACCAR Preferred Supplier Award is in recognition of continuous improvement in all aspects of Bridgestone/Firestone's business relationship with PACCAR.

Alternative Rubber & Plastics, Tonawanda, NY, has been appointed a distributor for the northeastern United States representing Lord's Chemlok and Ty-Ply adhesive product lines for applications involving elastomer device bonding.

Solutia, St. Louis, MO, appointed Prime Alliance, a distributor of quality plastic resins, as exclusive distributor into the plastic extrusion markets in North America for its Ascend nylon 6,6 products. Ascend nylon resins are designed for applications in the extrusion and film markets.

Hauser, Boulder, CO, announced that it will combine Hauser Laboratories with its Shuster Laboratories subsidiary into one entity to improve and expand the services provided to customers and to improve the overall efficiency of the organization. The new subsidiary will be called Hauser Technical Services.

Argonaut Technologies, San Carlos, CA, and Symyx Technologies have initiated a strategic collaboration to commercialize certain of Symyx's proprietary technology for high-throughput synthesis and screening of chemical materials. The first product offering of this collaboration is Endeavor, an eight-cell continuous-stirred parallel pressure reactor originally developed for use in Symyx's parallel polymerization reactors. Under terms of the collaboration, Argonaut will develop, manufacture and distribute the instruments worldwide, and the companies will share in the profits generated by the sale of the products.