PolyOne (Cleveland, Ohio / USA; www.polyone.com) has agreed to acquire GLS (McHenry, Illinois / USA; www.glscorporation.com), a leading North American provider of specialty thermoplastic elastomer compounds for consumer and medical applications. GLS has annual sales of approximately USD 130m. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. However, PolyOne expects that the acquisition will be slightly accretive to earnings in the first year. GLS has around 200 employees with manufacturing facilities in Illinois and Suzhou / China. In 2006, GLS became the first specialty TPE compounder to begin production in China – see Plasteurope.com of 22.05.2006.

At K 2007, GLS introduced a new family of TPEs based on “Infuse” olefin block copolymers (OBCs) from Dow Chemical (Midland, Michigan / USA; www.dow.com). The new “Dynalloy” OBC injection-moulding and blow-moulding grades broaden the company’s range of standard and customised TPE alloys for a wide range of applications.