The Indian pharmaceutical industry has realised the need for upgrading the skills of its employees in order to stay competitive in the global market scenario. Under the guidance of the government, various initiatives have been undertaken to educate the youth and make them skill ready for their jobs.

Air Products signed an agreement with Dhahran Techno Valley Company to build and develop an Industrial Gases technology center in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

BASF invests in another production plant for specialty zeolites at its Ludwigshafen, Germany, headquarters site. The new plant will double the company’s global specialty zeolites production capacity.

Phillips Sumika, a joint operation of Phillip Chevoron and Sumika Polymers, faces the liquidation of its business. Production facilities in Pasadena will be shut down by the end of the year.

More than twenty years ago Luck Stone Corporation, one of the largest family-owned and operated aggregates companies in the USA, embarked on a sequenced investigation to satisfy demand for a dry asphalt sand product that would avoid the environmental concerns inherent in wet systems. The solution also led them to applications for the production of their own design for dry engineered concrete sand.

In a recent online survey HIS asked engineers and technical professionals in the industrial sector about the pace of engineering, available resources, knowledge management practices, performance measurements and more.

Dow Dupont Materials Science announced the start-up of its new integrated world-scale ethylene production facility and its new Elite enhanced polyethylene production facility, both in Freeport, Texas. Both units will continue to ramp up through the third quarter and are expected to reach full rates in the fourth quarter of 2017.

GEA Niro launched a version of its proven Mobile Minor spray dryer for laboratory use. The manufacturer believes the unit to be well suited for drying small quantities of solutions, suspensions or emulsions for small representative powder samples.

Tetra Pak tries to overcome the need for big, heavy dosing and filling equipment for bulk solids with its new ConeValve Containment Valve.

Bilfinger's American subsidiary Westcon has bagged a slice of the country's booming petro–market: The company has been awarded a contract for key project management as well as the construction of a grass-roots refinery for Dakota Prairie Refining in North Dakota.