K-Tron International Inc. has closed its previously announced agreement to acquire certain assets of Wuxi Chenghao Machinery Company, Ltd. (Wuxi Chenghao), a privately-owned company in the People’s Republic of China (the "PRC"). The purchased assets were transferred from the seller to a newly-created Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprise (WFOE) established by K-Tron which will conduct business under the name Wuxi K-Tron Colormax Machinery Company, Ltd. (Wuxi K-Tron Colormax).

The total cost of the transaction over a five-year period, including the purchase price and payments under related employment and other arrangements with Wuxi Chenghao’s owner, could be as much as $3.5 million.

Wuxi K-Tron Colormax will be located in Luoshe Key Open Industrial Park, Wuxi City, in the Huishan district of Jiangsu province, approximately 60 miles west of Shanghai. he company will initially employ approximately 65 people and will design, manufacture, market, and service volumetric and gravimetric single- and twin-screw feeders and controls, vibratory trays, pelletizers, and pneumatic screen changers for use in plastics compounding and injection molding processes.

Wuxi K-Tron Colormax will become the newest member of K-Tron’s Process Group, a leading global supplier of feeding and pneumatic conveying equipment to companies in the process industries.

Commenting on the acquisition, K-Tron Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Edward B. Cloues II said, "The domestic Chinese feeder market represents a significant growth area for our Process Group. K-Tron has served the upper-tier PRC market for many years by selling its feeding equipment primarily to multinational end users through resellers, such as engineering firms, in Europe and the United States, through independent sales representatives in the PRC and by providing support through a Representative Office in Shanghai which we opened in 1996."