Forming what they say will be the largest supplier of pipe, profile, film, and sheet extruders, with manufacturing on three continents, Battenfeld Extrusionstechnik (BEX; Bad Oeynhausen, Germany), Cincinnati Extrusion (Vienna, Austria), and B+C Extrusion Systems (Foshan, China) Ltd. have combined. Instead of operating as independent entities of holding company BC Extrusion Holding, the companies united under the new brand, battenfeld-cincinnati, effective April 9. The newly combined business will also include U.S.-based extruder supplier American Maplan Corp. The combined company announced that it will operate under three end-market oriented divisions: construction, infrastructure, and packaging.

The Construction Division will be headed by Rainer Kottmeier and serve processors of profiles and PVC sheet, as well as those running wood plastic composites (WPC), decking, fencing, siding, and railing. Walter Häder will lead the Infrastructure Division, which will focus on transport and distribution of water, gas, and telecommunication data in plastic pipes. Henning Stieglitz will be in charge of the new Packaging Division, which will specialize in areas like thermoforming film for food packaging, as well as PVC granulators and processing solutions.

Last July, BC Extrusion Holding announced that 30-year company veteran Wolfgang Studener had left the firm, exiting as chairman of the board. Studener was replaced by Jürgen Arnold, who joined the group from pump manufacturer Sterling SIHI where he served as CEO.

The plastics processing machinery industry has been marked by consolidation of late, with film technology suppliers Reifenhäuser GmbH & Co. KG and Kiefel Extrusion GmbH joining last August when Reifenhäuser purchased the Kiefel extrusion machine manufacturing division from Brückner (which kept Kiefel Thermoforming). In 2008, Japanese machinery manufacturer Sumitomo Heavy Industries (SHI) acquired injection molding machine manufacturer Demag and merged it into its Sumitomo Plastics Machinery Ltd. (SPM) division. That same year, auxiliary equipment and robot manufacturer Wittmann Plastics Machinery acquired injection molding machinery manufacturer Battenfeld Injection Molding. —[email protected]