Assignment 2: Legal Advice - Essay Example

The Albemarle Paper Manufacturing Company purchased Ethyl Corporation, a major producer of tetraethyl lead in 1921. This acquisition greatly contributed to the better market stature of the company. The Albemarle Paper Manufacturing Company greatly assisted the Ethyl Corporation to expand its product lines to bromine, lubricant additives, and aluminum alkyls throughout the following few decades. “Ethyl spun off its chemical businesses” for the purpose of establishing an independent company named Albemarle Corporation (World News Inc, 2012).

The company adopted mergers and acquisitions as its expansion strategy and took up a series of such deals throughout the 20th century. Although the company was founded as a paper manufacturer, it abandoned paper manufacturing business in 1976 and concentrated more on chemical products. Currently, Albemarle Corporation is one of the leading producers of “hydro processing catalysts (HPC) and fluidized catalytic cracking (FCC) catalysts used in the petroleum refining industry” (World News Inc, 2012).

In addition, the company is the world’s largest formulator of ibuprofen. As per reports, recently the company has planned some major initiatives for the next five years. The Project One Albemarle is one of the major initiatives taken by Albemarle Corporation. This project is structured to “standardize and streamline the company’s global processes” (Albemarle, 2012). . The company management believes that this planned facility would add value to the existing FCC catalysts production. In 2011, Albemarle Corporation and Saudi Specialty Chemical Company jointly planned to initiate a new aluminum alkyls manufacturing facility in Jubail, Saudi Arabia; and finally, the company has also taken initiative to double its bromine production capacity in association with the Arab Potash Company (Albemarle, 2012).

Impacts of Administrative Laws A critical analysis on the major initiatives taken by Albemarle Corporation for the next five years reveals that some elements of the administrative law must be considered while proceeding with those initiatives. For instance, the construction initiatives such as the world-scale hydroprocessing facility and the aluminum alkyls manufacturing facility and other projects like bromine production demand the company to comply with administrative regulations regarding environmental safety, manufacture, and transport.

As Roberts (2011) points out, nowadays governmental authorities give specific emphasis on environmental safety, and hence majority of the nations including the United States have imposed certain restriction on businesses that may hurt environmental sustainability. Since the Albemarle Corporation is a chemical company, its operations are more likely to threaten the environmental safety. To illustrate, most of the chemical manufacturing processes release toxic greenhouse gases that are identified to be the root cause of ozone layer depletion.

Hence, the administrative regulations regarding environmental safety would be a difficult barrier for the company to overcome. Similarly, elemental bromine is a toxic substance that causes burns. Therefore, Albemarle Corporation has to obtain