Leading Brazing Alloy Manufacturer Unites Its Brands for Greater Market Recognition

Milwaukee, WI, January 26, 2009 – The Handy & Harman Precious Metals Group, North America’s largest provider of brazing materials today announced plans to unify all of its brazing companies under a single brand name – Lucas Milhaupt®.

The Handy & Harman Precious Metals Group is a family of companies focused on supplying innovative brazing and soldering materials and technical services to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) and aftermarket distributors across the globe.

In 2007, the group had record sales, and like many successful companies, the growth stems from acquiring strong regional or niche businesses. In addition to Lucas Milhaupt, Inc. (Milwaukee, WI) and Handy & Harman of Canada, Ltd. (Toronto), the group now includes Protechno s.a. (Ribérac, France), and Omni Technologies Corp. (Brentwood, NH), both specialty manufacturers of brazing materials including flux cored and coated aluminum products. Most recently, the group opened a new brazing alloy fabrication facility in Suzhou, China.

Any successful global business understands the need to build its reputation, image, and brand recognition. A successful brand mark that summarizes the essence of a company is critical in developing business on a global scale. Beginning in January of 2009, the Handy & Harman Precious Metals Group companies will introduce a new unified face to the world, led by a strengthened brand mark as part of a strategy to expand its global brazing business. The company will benefit from a single brand identity throughout all its global operations, increasing the company’s recognition for its products and services.

All of the group’s brazing companies will operate under the Lucas Milhaupt name. While they already have a global presence by selling brazing materials in over 50 countries, presenting a unified brand will provide additional opportunities to share technical expertise and application knowledge across all operations, and make it easier for all customers to understand the wide-ranging products and services offered.

As global OEM companies strive to better meet the demands of their customers, Lucas Milhaupt is ideally suited to help them with manufacturing facilities in North America, Europe, and Asia, and an expanding technical service network, working with customers to improve their brazing operations. Lucas Milhaupt will utilize a new tagline, Global Brazing Solutions™, to better reflect this global presence and focus on solution selling. The initial changes to incorporate the new brand mark on stationary, forms, signage, and websites will occur over the next few months.

“We’re confident that the net effect of this consolidation will be that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts,” said Phil Malliet, President of the Precious Metals Group, “as we begin to leverage the advantages and values of the individual brands while consolidating the group into a world-class organization.”

About Lucas Milhaupt

Lucas Milhaupt, Inc., a Handy & Harman company, is one of the world’s leading suppliers of brazing and soldering materials to the electrical/electronic, appliance, and transportation markets worldwide. Lucas Milhaupt was founded in 1942 as a fabricator of brazing materials and was acquired by Handy & Harman in 1967. Founded in 1867, Handy & Harman began as a precious metals trader and developed into a fabricator, refiner, and processor.