Lead, production, world leaders

Gold, Aurum in Latin, is the only metal except copper that is markedly colored. It is abundant in low concentrations almost all over the earth s crust, in seawater, above all in metallic form and also as goldtellurid. Gold is found as grains in the bottom of rivers in California, Australia, Alaska, and Russia, Chemical Properties while in South Africa gold ore is won from mines with auriferous leaders. Gold is also won as a by-product from the production of copper, nickel, and lead. The world s yearly production of gold is looo tons, of which 150 tons are used in the electronics industry. 

Ticona, part of the Celanese group of companies, offers PBT, POM, PPS and LCP. The company is world leader in both POM and LCP production, and also has a leading position in PPS and PBT. Ticona is particularly strong in the USA and Europe, but is developing a growing Asian presence through joint ventures and investment in additional capacity. 

Today s leader, Frito-Lay Inc. of Texas, has brought about the most dramatic evolution in the American snack food industry. In 1932, Mr. Ehner Doolin of San Antonio started the Fritos brand Com Chips, and Mr. Herman W. Lay started to sell potato chips to the stores in Nashville, TN. In September of 1961, just 29 years after the two companies began their ventures, the Frito Company and H. W. Lay Company merged to become the Frito-Lay Company. In 1965, Frito-Lay and Pepsi-Cola merged. Today, Frito-Lay is the leading snack food producing company in the world. The company sells numerous salty snack food products that include potato chips, com chips, extmded products, nuts, and a variety of other products. 

In February 1997, Unilever resolved to sell subsidiaries it had acquired over the years to provide materials used in the production of its end-products. The package comprised four units Crosfields, a competitor purchased in 1919 that became a specialist in silicon- and aluminum-based compounds National Starch, a turn-of-the-century U.S. merger, which, when bought in 1978, was the world s largest producer of industrial adhesives and two Dutch acquisitions, Unichema, the world s leader in oleo chemicals, and Quest, a leading fragrance and food-ingredient supplier. (These businesses accounted for Unilever s revenue of 1.8 billion in 1993 as listed in Table 1.1). 

Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in 1975. When IBM entered into a contract with Microsoft to produce the software for the IBM personal computer in 1981, Microsoft began its transformation into the leading software company in the world. Its Windows operating system dominates the operating system market, Microsoft Office dominates the personal productivity software market, Internet Explorer dominates the browser market, and Oudook Express is the leader for e-mail use on personal computers. 

Asia Pacific, and most notably China, is the largest consiuner of ABS with 43.5% of total world consiunption in 2002. With consumption of around 2.0 million tonnes in 2002, China is the leader in ABS processing by far. In addition to its domestic production of 600,000 tpa, China has had to import in excess of 1.3 million tonnes of ABS, mostly from Taiwan (45%), Korea and Japan. Over the next few years, the annual growth rate of approximately 8% is expected to lead to a further widening of die demand gap to as much as 1.6 million tonnes by 2005, despite the rising domestic capacities. 

A number of suppliers coneentrate on just one particular type of engineering plastic. All of the world s leading acrylics suppliers for example, specialise only in PMMA production. Some single polymer companies are also leaders in their partieular field. Victrex, UK, for example, is market leader in PEEK polymers, while Rhodia Engineering Plasties is a leading polyamide supplier. 

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