Dorf Ketal Chemicals LLC has appointed Palmer Holland Inc. as a distributor for its lubricant additives and plastic additives lines. The additives are now made in India, but a Dorf Ketal official saidthe companywould like to also open a manufacturing plant in the United States.
Under the arrangement announced Thursday, North Olmsted, Ohio-based Palmer Holland is responsible for sales of the PX lubricant additives line for industrial and metalworking lubricant formulators, along with sales of Dorf Ketals products in the coatings market. Palmer Holland will cover the companys U.S. distribution in the Midwest, Atlantic Coast and Northeast regions.
We chose Palmer because they are the only distributor in the United States that overlaps with all three of our business units, Bill Loven, president of Dorf Ketal Chemicals North America, told Lube Report. They are involved extensively in the lubricant additives business and in the coatings industry for industrial coatings. And they have a little bit of play in the process chemicals business with relationships with Dow Chemical, and a few of the refineries and petrochemical plants in Houston and other parts of the United States.
In April 2007, Dorf Ketal acquired ExxonMobil Chemicals component additives business, and now handles the production at its main plant in Mumbai, India. The PX lubricant additives line is Dorf Ketals brand name for the component additives. We couldnt use the ExxonMobil trade name, so we had to use our own trade name, Loven explained. They have since then been evaluated and re-certified by ExxonMobil, as theyre still basically our largest customer.
He noted that Mumbai-based Dorf Ketal is in the midst of looking for a manufacturing facility in the United States. We say we would take the ideal facility in pretty much any geography in the United States, but if we have to build, were going to build it in the south Texas area, Loven continued. If the right facility was available anywhere else, wed certainly have a hard look at it.
An important factor with a facility would be getting quality people that know how to run it, he added. It doesnt do any good to buy a perfect facility if theres nobody there that can run it, knows the machinery and things like that, as hypercompetitive as it is for anybody that has anything to do with oil and gas, Loven said.