US merchant carbon dioxide (CO2) market, fundamental to the industrial gas business, is served by a complex supply chain. Some companies within the industry are fully integrated in the CO2 supply chain as they produce the crude, purify it to liquid, and distribute to distributors and end-users, while others are strictly CO2 distributors.
In some respects, this supply chain has lost a lot of its complexity in recent years with the rampant rate of acquisition activity in the marketplace. The rapid consolidation of the US merchant CO2 business has seen a shift away from private ownership toward industrial gas player ownership. Almost half of the privately-held merchant CO2 capacity, around 14%, was taken under the wing of Air Products and Matheson in their respective acquisitions of EPCO Carbon Dioxide Products, Inc. and Continental Carbonic in the space of less than 12 months in 2013/14.
Around the same time, Praxair – already a strong player in the CO2 business – acquired NuCO2, the leading national provider of micro-bulk beverage carbonation solutions in the US (2013). More recently, there have been other market shifts along the supply chain with deals in the plant and equipment side of the business as Cold Jet acquired fellow dry ice specialist IceTech (2016) and Pentair plc’s acquisition of Union Engineering earlier this year.
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