US-based Graham Engineering Corporation has acquired the assets and assumed certain liabilities of Welex Incorporated, a provider of sheet extrusion solutions. This follows the Graham Group’s acquisition of majority interest in American Kuhne in October 2012, furthering Graham’s investment in plastic processing technologies. The Welex manufacturing operations are expected to be integrated into GEC’s operations in York. David Schroeder, former President and CEO of Welex, has been appointed as the President of GEC, and Wolfgang Liebertz, current President of GEC, has assumed the role of CEO of the combined GEC/Welex organisation.

“We welcome the addition of the Welex technology and team to the Graham Engineering and American Kuhne complement of leading technologies, people and capabilities, and, look forward to adding further technologies, businesses and talent to our technology platform,” said Founder, Donald Graham. “The addition of Welex creates multiple points of synergy for the markets that GEC, AK and Welex serve: for customers worldwide, for supplier partners, and employees of the companies,” added Bill Kerlin, Chairman of GEC.

With over four decades of experience, Welex has installed lines in more than 3,000 customer locations in 69 countries. Welex innovations include co-extrusion and multi-layer methods as well as dozens of barrier lines that have been installed globally. GEC supplies extrusion blow moulding equipment and offers a complete range of monolayer and multilayer blow moulding equipment and technology upgrades including: rotary wheel blow moulders for bottle sizes from 85 ml up to 5-gallon packaging applications, shuttle machines for up to 10 litre capacity, reciprocating screw and shot pot machinery for lightweight HDPE containers, and single and dual head accumulator head industrial machines for up to 75lb shot capacities.

Located in Ashaway, RI, American Kuhne is a lobal supplier of standard and customised single screw extruders, feed screws, and controls to multiple end-use applications, as well as complete extrusion systems for medical tubing, pipe, and profile. ‘