C&EN: Carus fire impacts US permanganate supply

C&EN's Rick Mullin on the fire that shut down the Carus plant in Illinois: 

A fire at a Carus plant in LaSalle, Illinois, has temporarily shut down the only US producer of potassium permanganate and sodium permanganate and is raising concern about availability of the important water treatment chemicals.

The Jan. 11 fire destroyed a warehouse and caused extensive damage at the facility, Carus says. The firm declared force majeure on Jan. 18, saying it will be at least 90 days before it can fulfill orders for permanganate chemicals.

The company supplies about 80% of the US market for the chemicals, which are used in municipal water treatment to oxidize dissolved iron, manganese, and hydrogen sulfide into solids that can be filtered out. The bulk of imported potassium permanganate and sodium permanganate comes from India. China is the world’s largest producer of the chemicals, but companies there are hobbled by a US antidumping tariff on potassium permanganate.

A salesperson's dream for those who have permanganate in stock: 

“I’m getting an insane amount of calls for an insane amount of volume,” says one distributor who supplies imported permanganate, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of his company’s policy. “I’m getting unsolicited orders for six to eight months.” He and others anticipate an outage of considerably longer than 90 days.

Can't imagine the pressure that's on Carus to rebuild and start production again. Will be interesting to see if there are any manufacturers in Canada or Mexico who will try to pick up the slack...