Celanese has agreed to sell its 45% stake in the Polyplastics joint venture to partner Daicel for $1.575 billion. The deal, which is set to close later in 2020, will give Daicel full control of Polyplastics, which has been run by both companies for more than 50 years.
The world’s governments are signing vaccine supply pacts fast and furiously now, as the world continues to hope an effective prevention against Covid-19 will be found soon. Days after signing on with the UK government, German biotech BioNTech – working with American drugs giant Pfizer – has inked a deal with the US and is reportedly also talking to the EU.
In a more than four-day marathon session, marked in part by acrimonious discussions, EU leaders passed both the planned €750 million coronavirus recovery package and a new €1.1 trillion seven-year budget in the early morning hours of July 21.
Solenis has closed on another deal that boosts its offering to water-intensive industries. Effective Jul. 14, the US specialty chemicals producer completed its acquisition of Mexico's Poliquimicos for an undisclosed sum.
Engineering and construction group KBR has won contracts on two separate projects in China and India. The first will see it supply its proprietary catalyst for Shenghong Refining Petrochemical’s proposed vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) project in Lianyungang, China. The plant will have a capacity of 300,000 t/y – an on-stream date was not revealed.
In the ongoing litigation over whether Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide causes cancer, Bayer has suffered another setback, losing its appeal of the first of three US jury verdicts against it – even though the California Court of Appeals in San Francisco further slashed the 2018 damage award to $20.4 million.
BASF and Thyssenkrupp have signed a joint development agreement to expand their cooperation on the Thyssenkrupp’s Steam Active Reforming (STAR process). The engineering group’s proprietary dehydrogenation process is used to produce propylene from propane feedstocks or iso-butylene from iso-butane feedstocks, using an exceptionally stable catalyst.
DSM has entered into a joint venture with French agro-industrial group Avril to produce canola (rapeseed) proteins to meet growing global demand. The Dutch group will hold 75% of the new company, which is called Olatein, with Avril taking the remaining 25%.
The UK has signed an agreement to secure 90 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines developed by Germany’s BioNTech and France’s Valneva. The deals, for which financial terms were not disclosed, foresee taking 30 million doses from the German and 60 million from the French company.
Ulf Berghult has been appointed as Perstorp’s new CFO as of mid-February. He joins the group from Trelleborg, where he held the position as CFO since 2012.
Azelis has agreed to buy Orokia Israel for an undisclosed sum. The purchase will give the Belgian distributor entry to the “highly attractive” Israeli specialty chemicals market. Part of global investment group EQT, Azelis said the takeover of Orokia is consistent with its strategy of complementing organic growth with strategic acquisitions.
Saudi Aramco said it will reorganize its downstream business by the end of the year to support and enhance integration across the hydrocarbon value chain and better position the group to drive financial performance, value creation and global growth.
Ineos has launched a €3.6 billion leveraged loan – split between euros and US dollars – to refinance existing debt and reduce its term loan margins. Barclays, Citi and JP Morgan are global coordinators, alongside joint book runners BMO, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, ING and Lloyds.
Toward improving the standard of public healthcare across the EU, the European Parliament (EP) has passed a resolution calling for a common standard and a common post-Covid-19 response strategy that would guarantee emergency preparedness including a strategic reserve of pharmaceuticals.
US pharma giant Merck & Co is boosting its cancer drug development, adding two more collaborations – with Foghorn Therapeutics and Zymeworks.
German chemical producer Lanxess is realigning its water treatment business, divesting its reverse osmosis membrane activities to Suez and strengthening its ion exchange resins business to focus on high-end specialty applications.
New structure bundles the CDMO's production areas into the business units Solids, Semi Solids & Liquids and Soft Gel Capsules.
KNM Process Systems (KNMPS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Malaysia’s KNM Group, has entered into a heads of agreement to form a joint venture with ADAP Capital to participate in oil, gas and petrochemicals projects in Sarawak, Malaysia.
Cambrex is spending $3.6 million to expand flexible drug substance manufacturing at its site in Karlskoga, Sweden. Engineering has already begun, and work is expected to be completed by November 2020.
As the European Council meets tomorrow, July 17, in Brussels for its first in-person session since the coronavirus forced business, offices and governments into virtual reality, along with budgetary matters the heads of the 27-member states will debate a European Recovery Plan.
Air Liquide will spend over $100 million to install an air separation unit (ASU) on its Gulf Coast pipeline network in Ingleside, Texas, USA, to support a long-term supply agreement with Steel Dynamics Inc (SDI).
Under the name M Lab, Germany’s Merck has opened a new collaborative drug development center in Pudong, Shanghai, China. The facility with lab space of around 10,000 m2 is the largest of the pharmaceutical, chemicals and life science group’s nine such centers worldwide and is located in the heart of Shanghai’s biomedical sciences and research community.
The European Commission has fined Swiss specialty chemicals producer Clariant €155.8 million for its role in an ethylene purchasing scheme that also implicated other chemical producers, including US-based Celanese.
UK-headquartered multinational energy group BP has announced it will inject $70 million later this year into India’s Green Growth Equity Fund (GGEF). Based in Mumbai, GGEF invests in scalable operating companies and platforms across renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy storage, e-mobility, resource conservation and associated value chains.
Clariant is collaborating with Ineratec, a spin-off from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), to develop and commercialize novel technologies for producing renewable fuels and chemicals.
The UK will not participate in a plan to distribute a potential coronavirus vaccine to Europe’s most vulnerable citizens first. Tim Barrow, the UK’s ambassador to the EU, said in a letter to the European Commission the British government would not join the effort because as a non- EU member it would have no decision-making power in negotiations about purchases.
Norwegian energy group Equinor is leading a project in Humber, UK, to produce hydrogen from natural gas in combination with carbon capture and storage (CCS). The Hydrogen to Humber Saltend (H2H Saltend) project will be the start of a decarbonized industrial cluster in the Humber region, the UK’s largest by emissions.
Bayer has backed away from plans to create a science advisory panel to help decide still outstanding claims from US plaintiffs that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicide Roundup caused their non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Germany’s BioNTech is confident it will be ready to seek regulatory approval for its mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine by the end of this year, its co-founder and chief executive Ugur Sahin said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).
Leading chemicals distributor Brenntag has agreed to buy Oils ‘R US, a Thai distributor of lubricants for automotive, commercial vehicle, industrial and marine applications. The transaction is expected to complete in the second half of 2020.
Bayer’s relief over its recent deal to settle three-quarters of its outstanding Roundup-related US lawsuits for more than $10 billion altogether could be short-lived.
Nouryon has announced plans to start developing a manufacturing facility at its site in Ningbo, China, for two key organic peroxide intermediates: tert-butyl hydroperoxide (TBHP) and tert-butyl alcohol (TBA).
CordenPharma has expanded peptide manufacturing capacity at its GMP API facility in Boulder, Colorado, USA, to accommodate what it said is “a large spike in demand” for peptide APIs and to continue its overall growth strategy.
US industrial gases group Air Products has signed an agreement with Saudi Arabia’s Acwa Power and the Neom project to build a $5 billion world-scale green hydrogen-based ammonia plant. The facility, which Air Products said would be one of the largest of its kind, will supply 650 t/y of carbon-free hydrogen.
After it emerged last week that the US federal government had nailed down the lion’s share of the world’s supply of the antiviral remdesivir, Gilead Sciences’ new drug being touted as a promising treatment for Covid-19, the EU has held talks with the US drugmaker.
