In order to better serve our customers, we recently completed our building of a modern lab equipped with the latest technology. The Europe office is a professional lab we will use for polymer testing and bitumen modification developments.

The lab features the following new instruments:

• Mixing units for bitumen blending and high sheer blending
• Ring and Ball apparatus
• High temperature furnace for ash content
• Hot air oven
• Temperate water bath
• Penetration apparatus
• Cryostat minus 40C for cold flex testing
• Fluorescence microscope
• Brookfield Rotary Viscosity apparatus
• Density measurement tools
• Melt flow measurement apparatus
• DSC Analyzer

We will be posting updates about the new lab in the future!

Here are two more panoramic photos:

I recently returned from a multi-city trip to India. On this trip, we visited Kolkata (Calcutta), Bangalore (Bengalaru), Chennai and Mumbai (Bombay). One thing that struck me was that in all of the cities, major infrastructure work was being undertaken. Each city seamed to be building a new airport, raised highway (expressway or flyover as they are called in India) and a metro rail line. For those of you who have visited India previously, you will understand the urgency of upgrading the country’s infrastructure so this was really exciting for me to see. On the other hand, if you ask a local in any of those cities “when will the construction be finished?” They all have the same answer “who knows, probably another 5 or more years, but it was supposed to be done 2 years ago!” While that is a bit discouraging, what they have already completed is a major step forward.

Landing at the airport in Bangalore, we were welcomed by a brand new terminal which from the looks of it, rivals many great European airports. Next, driving the 45km to our hotel was mostly completed on a real multi-lane expressway. The road was quite smooth and we moved along at a respectable pace (they must have used SBS – Styrene-Butadiene Styrene in their new roads).

- Sam

Cold & Snowy St. Louis at the end of March! Not what we expected when arriving to the St. Louis Refractory Symposium. Normally, the weather is beautiful and gives everyone a welcomed taste of what Spring will feel like.

Despite the weather, everyone was in good spirits. BassTech and Budenheim discussed a variety of our specialty metal phosphate binders, deflocculants and corrosion inhibitors that compliment BassTech’s Sodium Silicates/Metasilicates, Green Chrome Oxide and other specialty additives provided to the refractory industry.

In preparation for the upcoming Unitecr 2013 in Canada, we redesigned our booth, which can be seen in the attached picture. We feel this will breath new life in our marketing efforts and continue to allow us to prove we are the customer’s most dependable and resourceful partner in maintaining their competitive edge.

-Tom