Nitrex and Linde are celebrating their 13-year collaboration, which today covers Europe and North America. This partnership emphasizes both companies’ positioning in terms of technology, digital, and green footprints. It also solidifies the strong synergy between them, increasing the value that they bring to their customers and each other.
Linde is a leading global industrial gas and engineering company that aims at making its customers more productive and successful while providing sustainable high-quality solutions, technologies, and services that help protect the planet.
The cooperation between Linde (previously Praxair) and UPC-Marathon, a Nitrex company, began in the USA in 2010, when Linde approached UPC-Marathon to build gas panels. Eventually, the company started sending some of its clients who needed technical support in UPC’s direction.
Paul Oleszkiewicz, President of UPC-Marathon, CPO & CSO, considers this a win-win relationship: “We can supply Linde gas customers with process controls, and in turn, Linde offers a highly reliable gas supply network. We are both aiming for top quality, efficiency, performance, and a greener tomorrow.”
Nitrex supplies Linde with equipment and analyses to control gas atmospheres, thanks to its competence in heat treatment and electrical fields, technical solutions, support, and world-class gas panels.
Grosman praises Nitrex’s expertise and prompt response. “The Nitrex expertise in heat treatment has helped our customers and, subsequently, our business. Nitrex provides improved quality, repeatable consistency, and elevated productivity of our customers’ products.”
He explains: “Our heat treatment customers may require equipment outside of Linde’s standard offering. Nitrex is the perfect match for that situation. With their unique business model and expertise, they can offer integrated turnkey solutions, including furnace manufacturing, service centers, [and] a unique digital portfolio that allows customers to fully automate their furnaces and benefit from predictive maintenance based on machine learning and asset management. Our companies really complement each other well.”
A Fruitful Relationship
The formal relationship between Linde and Nitrex first started in 2010 with a collaboration between Praxair and UPC-Marathon. That year, the first marketing agreement was signed and has been renewed several times, with the most recent taking place in 2021 between Linde and Nitrex.
Linde and Nitrex frequently work jointly to promote both companies’ capabilities, including joint sales calls, webinars, and marketing through brochures and trade shows.
To date, their collaborative portfolio encompasses over 30 projects and includes annealing, lamination annealing, and brazing, as well as R&D projects that promote decarbonization efforts.
By using their combined offerings of equipment and industrial gases, they have been able to address customer quality and safety issues, as well as update, install, and replace customer equipment that includes automated N2/H2 flow controls, sensors for oxygen, hydrogen, dew point, etc., and switch their gas use to cleaner gases.
As an example, Grosman mentions a carbon wire manufacturer who had issues with costly scrap rates. “We brought in Nitrex to help our customer with some of their furnace issues. We were able to install a completely new control system on the furnace and scrap rates went down dramatically.” This resulted in significant savings for the customer, allowing them to regain their equipment investment within a few months.
