Short supply leads to carbon black shakeups

摘要

The carbon black industry has been one of the most active sectors of the rubber industry in recent months, ranging from tackling environmental issues to dealing with shortages and price increases, to expansions and acquisitions that will shuffle the worldwide players. Last year ended with the climax of a decade-long probe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as the last three major players involved in the investigation signed consent decrees that brought millions of dollars of fines and commitments to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to install state-of-the-art pollution control technologies.