In April 2010, Hillenbrand acquired K-Tron International, which makes gravimetric and volumetric feeders, pneumatic conveyors and size reduction equipment used in a wide variety of industries.

This was followed 17 months later by the acquisition of Rotex, a leading manufacturer of screening and separation equipment. Together, they comprise a single business platform, the Process Equipment Group.

K-Tron Acquired by Hillenbrand April 1, 2010
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About the Process Equipment Group

The Process Equipment Group is a leading provider of equipment and systems for a wide variety of industrial processes. It serves customers through a well-established equipment manufacturing and replacement parts organization that spans the globe.

The Process Equipment Group has three operating companies: K-Tron – feeding and pneumatic conveying equipment; Rotex – dry-material screeners and separators; TerraSource Global – hammermills, sizers, roll crushers, wood hogs and other size reduction equipment provided under three brands: Pennsylvania Crusher, Gundlach and Jeffrey Rader. All three operating companies design, sell, install and support industrial equipment globally. Their products serve a wide variety of industries, including packaged foods, plastics, energy, fertilizers and petrochemicals.

K-Tron: bulk material handling and feeding systems for the process industries

K-Tron has facilities in the United States, Europe and Asia. It produces and sells feeders, pneumatic conveying and associated equipment under the K-Tron and provides systems engineering, service engineers, parts and training in support of its customers throughout the world.

K-Tron feeders control the flow of materials into a manufacturing process by weight (gravimetric feeding) or volume (volumetric feeding). Products include loss-in-weight feeders, volumetric feeders, weigh belt feeders, mass flowmeters and the innovative Bulk Solids Pump (BSP). K-Tron designs and produces its own weighing sensor, the Smart Force Transducer (SFT), and the related controls for continuous and batch processes. K-Tron is a global leader in feeders used in the plastics compounding, food, chemical, detergent and pharmaceutical industries.

K-Tron is also a leading manufacturer and systems provider of pneumatic conveying and bulk handling equipment. K-Tron is known for its dilute-phase vacuum conveying for large amounts of material at high rates over long distances, such as railcar unloading, transport to storage silos and day-bin transfer. K-Tron sells components such as blowers and rotary valves, as well as complete material handling systems. K-Tron is a leading provider of engineered systems for rail car and truck unloading and storage-to-production-line transfer systems which are used in the plastics compounding, food and chemical industries. K-Tron pneumatics products include standard vacuum conveyors for hard-to-handle materials, an all stainless steel pharmaceutical line of equipment and a variety of ancillary equipment. K-Tron also provides pneumatic conveying equipment and material handling systems sold to customers in the plastics extrusion and injection molding industries. Products include self-contained and central vacuum systems, volumetric and gravimetric blenders, material storage bins and feeders for handling various resin materials in the molding or extrusion of consumer plastic products. K-Tron pneumatics incorporate products from the former K-Tron Premier, K-Tron PCS and K-Tron Colormax lines.

Colormax Systems, a K-Tron Company, is located in Wuxi City, China, in the Huishan district of Jiangsu province, about 60 miles west of Shanghai.  It is located in a modern manufacturing facility registered as Wuxi Process Equipment Manufacturing, Co. Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Hillenbrand, the parent company of K-Tron. This facility is the base for importing core technologies from Europe and the United States. Those technologies are combined with local engineering, manufacture and assembly of locally produced mechanical components for multiple brands.

For Colormax Systems, core feeder technologies of weighing are imported from an international supplier of strain gauge technology and controls are imported from K-Tron Electronics in the United States. These two technologies are combined with mechanical components manufactured locally.

Terrasource Global: bulk material handling equipment and crushing machinery for mining, power and wood products industries

Terrasource Global is comprised of Pennsylvania Crusher Corporation, Gundlach Equipment Corporation and Jeffrey Rader Corporation. These companies produce and sell primarilycrushing equipment, such as hammermills, sizers, roll crushers and wood hogs, as well as material handling equipment such as pneumatic conveying systems and screening equipment. Crushers are used to resize various materials to a given smaller size, and the principal industries served are the electric utility, mining, pulp and paper, and wood and forest products industries.

Pennsylvania Crusher Corporation manufactures size reduction and related equipment to crush coal before it is used as fuel in the steam furnaces of coal-fired power generation plants, and it also serves other industries such as mining, quarrying and glass making. Penn Crusher is the leader in the U.S. in selling size reduction equipment and replacement parts to electric utility companies. The crushers most commonly sold by Penn Crusher are hammermills, such as granulators and Bradford breakers, and sizers. Crushers and sizers come in a wide variety of sizes and configurations, and each machine is built-to-order to meet the customer’s specifications. Penn Crusher also manufactures and sells a positive displacement action feeder using the same licensed technology that is the basis of the K-Tron Process Group’s Bulk Solids Pump.

Gundlach Equipment Corporation is a leading manufacturer of size reduction equipment for the coal mining industry. Gundlach is best known for its single and two-stage double roll crushers, which crush coal at the mine mouth and the preparation plant. Gundlach roll crushers, cage mills and other equipment also are used to crush coal and other minerals in coal-fired power stations, salt processing plants, fertilizer manufacturing facilities and other industrial applications. 

Jeffrey Rader Corporation combines Jeffrey Specialty Equipment Corporation and Rader Companies, Inc. into a global leader in the woody biomass industries. Rader was merged with and into Jeffrey on January 1, 2009, and Jeffrey changed its name to Jeffrey Rader in connection with the merger. Jeffrey has been an established leading producer of wood hogs, chip sizers and other size reduction equipment and related items for use primarily in the pulp and paper and wood and forest products industries. Rader is well known for its pneumatic conveying systems, screening equipment, engineered storage and reclaim systems and truck dumpers for processing bark and wood chips for the pulp and paper and forest products industries. Rader's Razorback™ hammermill is used to size bark and waste wood in wood fiber processing applications.

Jeffrey Rader also manufactures hammermills sold to the mining industry to resize chunks of coal, which come directly out of the mine, into smaller pieces. In addition, Jeffrey Rader sells electromechanical and electromagnetic vibratory feeders that are used primarily in the aggregates, coal, mineral, chemical and other industries to feed bulk solid materials into industrial processes. The Rader EDK feeder-delumper is used by the petrochemical industry in manufacturing polypropylene and polyethylene.

Rotex: dry separation screening equipment for the process industries

Rotex Global has 100 years of experience serving the needs of world-wide processing industries with dry-separation screening equipment. Rotex engineers and manufactures screening equipment and machines, feeders, conveyors, and automated analyzers for agriculture, chemical, fertilizer, food, minerals, plastics recycling and other industries in the global market.

Rotex High Performance Screeners are known for their durability and performance and are in use in hundreds of applications around the world. Rotex Application Engineers are located in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Japan and China.