Industry Roundup: Strategic Alliances and Association Memberships

By Consulting Specifying Engineer Staff February 28, 2005

Schneider Electric , Rueil-Malmaison, France, is moving to enhance its capabilities in energy management systems with the acquisition of Canadian-based Power Measurement, Inc. Schneider has agreed to acquire PMI, owned by a consortium led by GFI Energy Ventures LLC. A leading designer, manufacturer and provider of enterprise energy intelligent systems for energy suppliers, PMI had sales of $57 million in 2004.

FlexHead Industries, manufacturer of flexible fire-sprinkler connections has announced that they have entered into the system compatibility program created by Noveon, Inc. This program is designed to test and monitor ancillary products on an ongoing basis to ensure chemical compatibility with specific water distribution systems and fire sprinkler systems. FlexHead flexible sprinkler connection products were determined to be chemically compatible with Noveon BlazeMaster CPVC.

• Acromag, Wixom, Wis., was recently accepted as an associate member by the Control and Systems Information System Integrators Assn . Acromag manufactures signal conditioners and fieldbus I/O solutions for Ethernet, Modbus, Profibus, HART and LonWorks.

The Air Movement and Control Assn., Arlington Heights, Ill., has announced several additions to the number of licensees in its certified ratings program. These include: Kinetics Noise Control, Inc., Mississauga, Ontario; Chemposite, Inc. of Delta, British Columbia; and Flowtech Co. Ltd. of Yung-Ho City, Taipei County, Taiwan.

Dallas-based Flowserve has been awarded a contract from Shenhua Group Corp. of China, which is building the world’s first full-scale direct coal liquefaction plant. Flowserve has been actively involved in past construction of direct coal liquefaction pilot plants and has been involved with the Shenhua project since 2001, providing technical support to process licensors and engineering design companies.

• Steril-Aire, Inc., Burbank, Calif., and Research Products Corp., Madison Wis., have entered into a worldwide, nonexclusive license covering a number of the former’s patents and the latter’s UV germicidal lamps for coil and drain pan irradiation in HVAC systems.