French specialty chemicals producer Arkema has announced it will acquire privately owned Mexican company Polimeros Especiales, a producer of high performance waterborne resins for applications in architectural and decorative paints, textiles, pressure sensitive adhesives and construction.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has declared the global monkey pox outbreak to be a “public health emergency of international concern.” This is the organization’s second such declaration of the past two years, after Covid-19 in 2020.
Dow has announced several new steps in its plans to accelerate the deployment of plastics recycling technologies in Europe and the US.
Shanghai Chemical Industry Park Industrial Gases (SCIPIG), a subsidiary of French industrial gases group Air Liquide, will invest more than €200 million in two hydrogen plants and related infrastructure in China’s Shanghai Chemical Industry Park (SCIP).
WuXi AppTec and its subsidiary Wuxi STA have announced several investments in manufacturing and research in Asia, with the Changzou campus in China’s Jiangsu Province a focal point.
Germany’s Röhm has begun construction of a capacity expansion in China for its Plexiglas polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) molding compounds. A groundbreaking ceremony took place at the Shanghai site on Jul. 18 and the expanded plant is due to start operating by the second quarter of 2023.
UK sustainable technologies group Johnson Matthey plans to invest £80 million in a gigafactory at its site in Royston to scale up the manufacture of hydrogen fuel cell components. The facility is expected to be in operation by the first half of 2024.
Shell Chemicals has announced it will earmark “billions of euros” from its current capital spending budget to make production assets more sustainable as it works to achieve net zero emissions by 2032.
The Jul.18 launch of GSK’s consumer healthcare spinoff Haleon on the London Stock Exchange – said to be the largest London listing in more than a decade – seems to have gone off more like a whimper than a bang.
Life science company Cytiva has acquired a chromatography resins factory in Muskegon, Michigan, USA, marking its first investment in new capacity outside its manufacturing base of Sweden.
Azelis is acquiring Chemical Solutions (ChemSol), a distributor of raw materials for the personal care, cosmetics and household market segments in Malaysia.
BASF has kicked off the third and final round of its expansion project for polyurethanes precursor MDI at Geismar, Louisiana.
US-based ABL, which bills itself as a pure play CDMO specialized in the development and manufacturing of viruses for vaccine candidates, gene and cancer therapies, is partnering with KaliVir Immunotherapeutics on oncolytic viruses.
Pfizer and BioNTech have filed an application with the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for approval of the Comirnaty Covid-19 vaccine in children aged six months to five years.
US-based Vertex Pharmaceuticals has agreed to pay $320 million in cash to acquire ViaCyte, a compatriot private cellular therapy company specializing in a treatment for type-1 diabetes (T1D). The transaction is expected to close later this year.
To further increase its capabilities in serving Life Science customers in Europe, STAXS is expanding its facility in Heerenveen, specifically designed for this customer segment and with carbon neutrality in mind.
Solvias, a Swiss CDMO serving the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, material science and cosmetic industries, has acquired Dutch biotech Cergentis for an undisclosed sum. The deal bolsters Solvias’ platform of biologics and cell and gene therapy (CGT) testing solutions.
Project Air, a production facility for sustainable methanol in Stenungsund, Sweden, described by the project’s partners Perstorp, Fortum and Uniper as “unique,” has been selected as one of 17 large-scale “green tech” projects that will share more than €1.8 billion in aid from the EU Innovation Fund.
W. R. Grace is expanding its fine chemicals contract development and manufacturing facility in South Haven, Michigan, USA. The project is scheduled for completion in January 2024.
Glyphosate and the former Monsanto’s herbicide Roundup have returned to the headlines following last month’s publication of a 2013-2014 study by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) that that found traces of the herbicide’s active ingredient in the majority of urine samples collected.
Japan’s Ube has selected an undisclosed location in the US state of Louisiana as the site for a planned dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and ethyl methyl carbonate (EMC) production facility.
It took longer than expected, but the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on July 13 finally granted an Emergency Authorization (EUA) to Nuaxovid, the protein-based sCovid-19 shot developed by Novavax.
German biopharma Boehringer Ingelheim, compatriot CDMO Evotec and French diagnostics firm BioMérieux have formed a joint venture to develop a new approach to fight the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections.
Dutch paints and coatings group AkzoNobel has announced it will spend €20 million to increase and improve production at two of its sites in France, creating around 30 new jobs.
Fujifilm is preparing to invest $1.6 billion to ramp up the cell culture manufacturing services of its CDMO subsidiary Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies.
Shell is going ahead with plans to bring Europe’s largest renewable hydrogen plant on stream by 2025.
US conglomerate 3M has agreed with the Flemish government to spend more than €571 million on cleaning up PFAS-contamination at its site in Belgium. The Flemish government had ordered 3M to halt PFAS production at Zwijndrecht last October because of contamination levels.
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have ordered 3.2 million doses of Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine, even before the protein-based and adjuvanted shot has cleared the US Food and Drug Administration.
Brazilian oil group Petrobras has finalized the sale of its entire 27.88% stake in linear alkyl benzene (LAB) producer Deten Quimica to Spanish energy and petrochemicals group CEPSA Quimica for 514 million Brazilian reais.
In the wake of the US Supreme Court’s recent overturn of Roe v. Wade, a 50-year-old decision by an earlier team of justices that guarantees women the right terminate a pregnancy, attention has turned to the so-called morning-after pill mifepristone – which remains legal for now – and easier access to birth control.
A group of four financial institutions have gained full control of The Lycra Company after former owner Ruyi Textile and Fashion International Group defaulted on a $400 million loan associated with its purchase from Invista in January 2019.
While Europe still deliberates, and municipalities monitor sewage to pinpoint the further spread of coronavirus subvariants, especially those evolving from the omicron variant, the US Food and Drug Administration’s advisory panel has voted 19-2 to recommend that the government’s autumn vaccination program be based on the second generation mRNA vaccines developed by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna.
Dutch biopolymer producer Avantium has won a new customer along the path to commercializing its renewable polyethylenefuranoate (PEF) as a replacement for fossil-fuel based PET, the material most used for plastic beverage bottles.
US-based agricultural sciences company FMC has entered into an agreement to buy BioPhero, a Danish pheromone research and production firm, for about $200 million.
Swiss CDMO Lonza plans to build a large-scale commercial fill & finish facility in Stein. The new facility, to be located on the same campus as Lonza’s existing clinical drug product capabilities, will cost roughly 500 million Swiss francs and should be completed in 2026.
