INDUSTRY: More Expansion

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Few U.S. companies have expanded as much in the last five years as Union Carbide & Carbon Corp. The world's biggest maker of plastics and the second biggest chemical company (first: E. I. du Pont de Nemours), Union Carbide has pumped $500 million into new plants and products. Last week Union Carbide announced another whopping expansion. From the Prudential and Metropolitan Life insurance companies it borrowed $300 million to step up its output of petroleum products, plastics, iron alloys and its new wool-like synthetic fiber, Dynel. If it can get materials, Union Carbide will build at the rate of more than $100 million a year.

Other expansion programs announced last week:

¶ American Cyanamid Co. got a fast tax write-off from the DPA for a new $47 million nitrogen-compounds plant to be built near Avondale, La., a few miles outside of New Orleans.

¶ U.S. Steel signed contracts to build a $15 million, 170-mile-long ship channel through Venezuela's Macareo and Orinoco Rivers that will enable seagoing ore boats to pick up high-grade iron ore from its Cerro Bolivar iron mine, deliver it to the -new Fairless plant (TIME, Nov. 12).

¶ Chicago's Crane Co. (plumbing fixtures, valves) stepped into the aviation industry by buying Hydro-Aire, Inc. of Burbank, Calif, (aircraft valves, filters) for $4,000,000, expects to put $8,000,000 to $10,000,000 into expanding its new subsidiary.

¶ Caterpillar Tractor Co. borrowed $35 million to expand its plants in Joliet and Peoria, Ill., and to build a new plant in York, Pa. which will be used to supply its eastern and Canadian dealers.