Paralogics was founded by entrepreneurs Jim and Kiersten Neal, two decades after starting a candle making business in their kitchen in 1998. The company now makes preblended, soy-based and natural wax blends for candles. It also produces fully refined paraffin waxes, microcrystallines, natural waxes, petrolatums and polyethylene and Fischer-Tropsch waxes for industrial applications.

The company blends waxes to customer-specific requirements and ships them in liquid form in railcars, trucks and iso-containers, as well as solid pellets and slabs, ranging from one pallet to truck loads.

Paralogics has a strong reputation in the wax formulating, blending and packaging industry, Scott Obermeier, Calumets executive vice president, commercial, told Lube Report in an email. Calumet and Paralogics had a good business relationship prior to the acquisition, he said.

Obermeier explained that the acquisition of Paralogics and its integration across Calumets existing wax value chain will add blending, formulating and packaging capability. We see this combination as very powerful, allowing us to more efficiently access higher margin end markets, extend up the value chain into packaging and blends, and add additional technical expertise in high margin formulations. We will now have a fully integrated wax solution platform.

Paralogics said its rail-served warehouse has a spur leading to its facility, while its Midwest location offers direct access to truck and rail service. Obermeier said the acquisition enhances Calumets logistical capabilities and footprint, specifically in the Midwest and to the Northeast.

The Paralogics facility includes 100,000 square feet of combined manufacturing and warehousing space, an onsite lab, blending tanks equipped with load cells for precise measurement of ingredients and Magnum-brand wax slabbing presses. Slabbing involves pouring wax into row of vertical molds, like pouring water into an ice cube tray.

Calumet, also based in Indiana, has refined specialty wax production capacity of 120 million pounds per year of paraffin, intermediate and microcrystalline waxes at its facility in Shreveport, Louisiana. The company also produces slack and soft waxes, along with petrolatum, familiarly known as petroleum jelly.

Crude oil refineries produce slack and fully refined waxes as a coproduct or byproduct of API Group I base oil refining.