Boston
Letter to Roberts (Consarc President) About IMM
Date: July 11, 1989
To: R. J. Roberts
From: James F. Metcalf
Subject: Your fax today
Dear Ray,
There are errors in your understanding of the IMM background.
Raufer, RJ and myself sold the idea of the gas purge process to IMM at the VIM/VAR seminar in the fall of 1986. The equipment for this process was delivered from Scotland and I was sent to Japan and Taiwan from March 21 to April 10, 1987. I spent a lot of time with the IMM people for the sole purpose of the new process. No work was started on future equipment but we did discuss changes which could be made to the equipment in Tokyo.
My next trip to the Far East was to Taiwan on the fourteenth of May 1987. On May 27, 1987 I met IMM with Raufer. It was at this time that I put the idea for a five ton furnace, VAR and CVD of Calcarb, into their mind. Their plan was to move and improve the existing equipment. The idea of an engineering study was introduced at those meetings. It was during that trip that I informed Raufer and Yamaguchi that I was planning to resign to set up a carbon production company somewhere in the world. That trip was seven days with more than half the time being spent on the process contract.
The next time I met with IMM was after the notification of my pending resignation to the board of directors on June 19. Rowan called me on June 22 and I agreed to continue to assist Consarc with VIM sales on some agreeable basis. On June 29 I stopped in Japan for five days for Calcarb customers and to visit the new site which IMM had selected. IMM was informed that I would act as consultant for Consarc for the engineering study which he was planning to order. I offered my services to IMM on August 14.
Consarc Scotland (Cooke) offered me a contract which he told me that you asked him to draw up for all the Consarc companies which would use my consulting services. The contract required me to pass title to all my ideas for a simple day payment. This was not acceptable, so I offered my services on a sliding scale basis for the coming year. Scotland would not agree to my sliding scale prices, but did offer to buy forty days at a set rate. They gave me a purchase order to visit a German customer to sell a six ton vacuum furnace which included one day's pay. This meant that if I were successful in finding the right ideas on that single day, then my future services on the design would not be required. Wilson canceled a visit to Moscow which he claims you ordered. Calcarb would have nothing to do with me.
When the study was completed for IMM it became clear to me that my services would no longer be required. When I positioned myself to protect my ideas, you would not agree to a split of the project which left me in control of the new ideas. When the split was agreed on, I sent the fax to IMM which left a large portion of the job to be under IMM's control in the field with me as their consultant. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT IS PROPOSED NOW.
I have spent a lot of thinking time on this project and process without payment of any type. It would be stupid of me to sell all this work for two days' pay.
Last December the executive vice president of Consarc told me that my services to any Consarc company were not required. The conversation which brought out that fact was honest and above board. I was fired.
I have not been privileged to any Consarc information on this project since a meeting at Rancocas more than one year ago. At that meeting, for which I was not paid for my time or expenses, I offered additional technical ideas.
I could not know the costs, detail designs, or sales strategies at the time when I resigned because we did not start the study until almost three months after that event.
IMM have new specifications and a purchasing strategy which appear to be along the lines which would have been in the past if the purchase had gone forward as planned. I have a better plan to sell to them and am now privileged to their plans.
Can you come up with a better plan than just paying me two days' pay for thirty-five years of experience and a lot of work for which I have received no compensation? Of course, the plan must be acceptable to IMM. If not, I will try to be an honest broker while assisting in this project. My ideas will produce a metal with nitrogen less than five parts per million with correct economics.