Find out who is making industry headlines this month.

RAE Corp., Pryor, Okla., maker of refrigeration, process cooling and heat transfer coils, agreed to purchase the assets of King Coil from Mestek, Westfield, Mass. The agreement provides for the extension of RAE Corp.¿s heat transfer coil product line.

Cincinnati-based Marathon Sensors appointed Gary Lang as director with its combustion products group in the United States, Canada and Mexico regions. Lang leads sales and marketing for the company¿s line of combustion trim products, which includes oxygen sensing and control instruments.

CCI Thermal Technologies Inc., Edmonton, Alberta, purchased Ruffneck Heaters, a manufacturer of electric industrial heating equipment. Based in Calgary, Alberta, Ruffneck¿s product line includes heat-exchanger unit heaters, explosionproof electric air heaters, industrial electric air heaters and explosionproof thermostats.

Cookson Electronics Equipment (CEE), also known as Speedline Technologies Inc., Franklin, Mass., entered into an exclusive partnership with MMI Systems Pte Ltd., Singapore. The deal was concluded after a search to find a partner in the Asian marketplace that will provide customers with added capacity, delivery, service and competitive pricing. The new facility will be located in the Suzhou Industrial Park in the Shanghai region of China.

Lytron Inc., Woburn, Mass., partnered with Alpha Electronics Corp., Tokyo, a distributor and service company, to open an Asian service depot in Hatogaya City, Japan. This depot will provide service for Lytron¿s system products, including Kodiak recirculating chillers, large capacity chillers and modular cooling systems, across the Pacific Rim.

A consortium of New York City-based private equity firms -- comprised of The Blackstone Group, Apollo Management, L.P., and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners (the ¿Investor Group¿) -- signed an agreement to acquire Ondeo Nalco (¿Nalco¿) from Suez S.A. in a transaction valued at $4.2 billion (not including certain leases that will be assumed with the transaction).

Naperville, Ill.-based Nalco provides water treatment and process chemicals and services to companies in the general industrial, institutional, pulp and paper, and energy sectors. The company generated revenues of more than $2.6 billion in 2002.

BTU International, North Billerica, Mass., purchased the assets of Sagarus Robotics, Tempe, Ariz., provider of automated systems for semiconductor packaging. BTU says its reflow systems and advanced thermal bumping technology combined with Saragus¿ processing tools will benefit process automation, process control and automated wafer handling.