From poisoning garden pests to exfoliating dry skin, Lonza puts itself in the middle of things. As the US operations of its parent company, Lonza accounts for about a third of the Lonza Group's $2.5 billion in annual sales. While Lonza doesn't actually make consumer products, the company provides chemical ingredients and intermediates for the personal care, water treatment, pharmaceutical, and plastics industries, from its nine manufacturing and R&D locations throughout the US.

Spectra is all about the colors. Spectra Colors Corporation manufactures colorants and dyes for everything from Polaroid's imaging products to Samsung ink jets to Kiwi shoe polishes. The company, which was founded in 1987, maintains a laboratory, production area, and warehouse at its New Jersey headquarters and also has a distribution network that spans the globe.

Diversified Chemical Technologies is a manufacturer of specialty chemical products for the automotive, consumer packaging, electronics, steel, and transportation industries. The company operates through subsidiaries Adhesive Systems (hot melt, pressure sensitive, and water based adhesives), Coat-It (polymer chemicals), and Diversified Chemical Technologies (industrial cleaners). Its Paperworks unit distributes paper and other office supply products. Diversified Chemical Technologies has marketing partnerships with Xerox (paper products) and Procter & Gamble (cleaning products). It has facilities in the US and South Korea and distribution subsidiaries in Europe and South America.

Where would we be without the squeegee? Ettore Products doesn't want to know. The company's founder, Ettore Steccone, designed and patented the modern squeegee in 1936. Ettore also makes a variety of other cleaning items such as window sponges, extendable automobile scrub brushes, dusters, floor squeegees, and scrapers, all of which can be found at hardware and do-it-yourself stores such as Ace, Home Depot, Lowe's, Sears, and Sutherland Lumber. The company manufactures its products at its 35,000 sq. ft. headquarters in Oakland, California, and has international locations in China and the Netherlands.

TIC Gums was established in 1909 and is operated by the third generation of the Andon family, which has owned the company since 1949. While TIC Gums doesn't spend the day blowing bubbles, its gums are found in everything from donut glaze to hand lotion. The company is a leading US provider of hydrocolloids (thickeners) used in cosmetics, food (including chewing gum), and pharmaceuticals. Products -- including agar; carrageenan; guar gum; and pectin in powder, spray, and "pre-hydrated" forms -- are shipped to customers worldwide. The company has agents and stock locations in Asia, Australia, Europe, South America, and North America.

Canada's Resin Systems manufactures advanced composite materials designed to replace wood, steel, and concrete. The company's Version polyurethane resins are the basis of its composite materials. Operating division RS Technologies manufactures power transmission poles made of composite materials. The poles, designed to replace conventional wooden and steel poles, are sold to power and utility companies in Canada and the US. Resin Systems achieved full-scale commercial production of its RStandard modular transmission poles in 2005. Two years later it agreed to make Home Depot subsidiary HD Supply Utilities its sole distributor. Resin Systems also makes composite roller tubes used in material handling systems.

Penn Color might not have anything to do with your pen color, but there's a good chance that some piece of plastic within your line of sight is colored by Penn. The Pennsylvania company manufactures dispersions, colorants, inks, and coatings primarily for the plastics industry, but also for automobile makers, printers, construction materials, packaging, wall covering and flooring, and even for use in nail polish. Penn Color has six manufacturing plants in the South East and North East US and one in the Netherlands. The company was formed in 1964 as PFD Plastics.

It isn't just about red ink or black ink at DIC Corporation -- it's green, blue, and yellow, too. The company's graphic arts unit (more than half of sales) produces offset, gravure, and news inks, coatings for paper and cans, printing supplies (plates, films), and presses. It also makes imaging products (toners, drums, magnetic foils). DIC has three other business units: industrial materials (building materials and synthetic resins), high-performance and applied products (PET bottles, colorants, polymer additives, and labels), and electronic and information materials (engineering plastics and epoxy resins). It had been known by the name Dainippon Ink and Chemicals until mid-2008.

Airgas, Inc.(NYSE: ARG), through its subsidiaries, is the largest U.S. distributor of industrial, medical, and specialty gases and related hardgoods, such as welding supplies. Airgas is also a leading U.S. distributor of safety products, the largest U.S. producer of nitrous oxide and dry ice, the largest liquid carbon dioxide producer in the Southeast, and a leading distributor of process chemicals, refrigerants and ammonia products.

The world's #2 ink maker (behind Sun Chemical), Flint Group produces inks and coatings for a variety of applications, including packaging, publication, commercial uses, and digital printing. It operates four business units: printing inks, flexographic products (printing plates), pigments (colorants and additives), and printing blankets, sleeves, and chemicals. Flint owns plants throughout the world, and its customers produce magazines, newspapers, catalogs, and packaging materials. The company's products include sheetfed and web offset, ultraviolet and electronic beam (UV/EB) curable, and flexographic inks as well as environmently friendly vegetable oil-based inks. Flint Group is owned by CVC Capital Partners.

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