Linde and Air Products Form Joint Venture

Linde Gas North America and Air Products APD today announced they have formed Hydrochlor, a 50-50 joint venture to supply high purity anhydrous hydrochloric acid to the electronics and other industries. As part of the agreement, Hydrochlor will build a facility to process and package HCl supplied via pipeline from The Dow Chemical Company. The new facility will be located on Dow's Freeport, Texas, site. Oversight for Hydrochlor will be governed by a team of managers from each partner company. The facility, scheduled to be commissioned in the second quarter of 2012, will meet current merchant requirements and can be expanded to serve growth in market demand.