Atmospheric and Specialty gases company, Air Products and Chemicals Inc. (APD) recently opened its new specialty amines plant in Nanjing, China. The facility complements its existing local capabilities to support customers in the growing polyurethane additives and epoxy markets. The new specialty amines plant is designed to manufacture many of the amine chemistries marketed by the business globally. Air Products already operates two large air separation plants. Air Products focuses on China for growth as the country seems to be having a strong and potential market as well as industries, such as construction, coatings and automobile production.   The new plant has significantly strengthened the supply chain capabilities of Air Products' Performance Materials business in China and throughout Asia. Other strategic capabilities that the company has built for its Performance Materials business include a technology center in Shanghai's Zhangjiang Industrial Park, a triethylenediamine manufacturing facility for polyurethane additives

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Rail operator CSX, will report its second quarter financial results on Tuesday 07/15/08 after the close of the stock market. Art Hatfield, an analyst with Morgan Keegan is forecasting that CSX will meet Wall Street’s estimates. He thinks the impact of high fuel costs will be offset by continuing improvements in the company’s operational efficiencies. CSX has had quite a quarter. Despite a 37+% rise in the shares year to date, 12% this quarter in which the stock market in general has been decimated, and the stock trading near this year’s highs, the company has attracted the ire of a shareholder group comprised of The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI) and 3G Capital Partners. The shareholder group is claiming that CSX is underperforming and could achieve $2.2 billion in annual productivity gains within five years. The group also says profits at CSX could quadruple in five years compared with company forecasts ...

Yesterday we learned that non-farm productivity rose 2.2% in the first quarter of this year. Anyone who was working in an office or factory when the last recession hit in 2001 knows what that means—a lot of people have been laid off or had their hours cut back, and the lucky ones who haven’t are filling in the gap left by their colleagues’ absence. Here’s how the Bureau of Labor Statistics explained the current numbers: Productivity gains were due primarily to declines in hours worked. . . The decrease in hours was the largest since the second quarter of 2003, when they fell 2.1 percent. A look back to the 2001 – 2003 period reminds us that productivity continued to grow at a healthy pace throughout the recession. Wages, on a per-hour basis, rose, but not enough to keep up with inflation: Hourly ...