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Business digest


Belgian chemicals group Solvay is acquiring privately-held US-based speciality chemicals and polymers group Chemlogics for $1.34bn. Solvay will incorporate the company in its Novecare business unit to create a portfolio of tailored chemical solutions for the oil and gas market, serving in stimulation, cementing, production and water management applications.


Private equity firm Advent International has divested its interest in German oxo intermediates and derivatives producer Oxea to Oman Oil. The purchase price was not disclosed.


Swiss speciality chemicals producer Clariant has sold its textile chemicals, paper specialities and emulsions businesses to SK Capital for around CHF425m. The three businesses are now operating under the name Archroma.


Chevron Phillips Chemical is to commence work on the US Gulf Coast petrochemicals project announced in March 2011. The company has awarded an engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contract to a jv between Houston, Texas-based JGC (USA) and Aliso Viejo, California-headquartered Fluor Enterprises to construct the 1.5m t/year ethane cracker portion of the project. An EPC contract has also been awarded to Gulf Coast Partners, a partnership between engineering and project management specialist Technip USA and engineering construction company Zachry Industrial, to build two polyethylene facilities, each with a capacity of 500,000t/year.


German supplier of aseptically filled injection systems Vetter is investing over $100m across its production sites in Germany and the US to expand and upgrade its facilities to meet increasing demand from the pharmaceutical and biotech markets.


RWTH Aachen University and Bayer Technology Services (BTS) have founded the Joint Research Centre on Computational Biomedicine, to be headed by Andreas Schuppert, a key expert for industrial mathematics at BTS and university professor at the Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science.


Petrochemical giant Huntsman is acquiring the titanium dioxide business of chemicals and advanced materials concern Rockwood for around $1.1bn.


US speciality chemicals company Albemarle has expanded its presence in the electronic materials market with the acquisition of UK- based Cambridge Chemical, a specialist in


Return of the penny farthing? BASF displayed its Concept 1865 – Rethinking Materials e-bicycle made from more than 20 different plastics at the K’13 event. Celebrating the year the first pedal cycles appeared, the bicycle was conceived by the design agency DING3000 as a ‘thought experiment’ to combine as many different, and innovative BASF plastic types, each contributing their own specific benefit.


technology for the production of high purity metal organic chemicals used in the laser market.


India’s largest pharmaceutical firm Ranbaxy Laboratories is reported to be planning to acquire a further manufacturing facility in India to support product launches and transfer some drug production from its Mohali, Punjab facility.


at its Newcastle, South Africa, site. The company has invested €40m in the unit at the facility, which produces of sodium dichromate for further processing into chrome tanning materials for the global leather industry.


German speciality chemicals company Lanxess has commissioned a new CO2


concentration unit


Kentucky, US, plant. The debottlenecking will support increasing demand for the catalysts driven mainly by shale gas development.


BASF is to acquire US cellulosic ethanol and enzyme producer Verenium for $4/share, valuing the San Diego-based company at $62m.


US biotech major Amgen has completed its tender offer to purchase all outstanding shares of common stock of San Francisco- headquartered biopharmaceutical company Onyx Pharmaceuticals for $125/share, a total purchase price of $9.7 bn, net of estimated Onyx cash.


Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies has opened its mammalian cell culture cGMP manufacturing facility in Billingham, Teesside, UK. The facility was designed and built to utilise primarily single-use technologies for both upstream and downstream operations. It has initially been commissioned with 200L and 1000L bioreactors, with a 2000L bioreactor planned for installation in 2014.


Swedish contract development and manufacturing organisation Recipharm is to invest €32m in its Wasserburg site near Munich, Germany, to create the company’s fourth production area at the facility. The development will significantly increase the company’s lyophilisation capacity with a facility equipped with the automatic loading and unloading technology.


Speciality chemicals producer Clariant has expanded production capacity for its Houdry dehydrogenation catalysts at its Louisville,


Dutch chemical business LyondellBasell has opened a 6500m2


Texas, US, to develop process technologies and chemical catalysts for its intermediates and derivatives business.


Holywell, Wales-located Albany Molecular Research (UK) has been awarded a seven- year contract by the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) for the development and manufacture of an active ingredient under clinical evaluation.


Penn Pharma has opened its £14m purpose- built facility for the development and manufacture of high quality oncology drugs in Tredegar, Wales. The high-containment manufacturing plant can produce multiple APIs in batches of 1-120kg. The drug producer partnered with process equipment supplier GEA Pharma in the specification and development of technologies employed at the facility.


UK biopharma company Vernalis has entered into a drug discovery collaboration with Japan’s Asahi Kasei Pharma to utilise Vernalis’ fragment and structure-based drug discovery platform against an undisclosed target for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.


British management system certification specialist BM Trada has become the first certification body to receive palm oil accreditation from RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil).


Chemistry&Industry • November 2013 19 technology centre in Houston,


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