OCI, a Dutch producer of methanol and nitrogen products, has formed a strategic alliance with investors ADQ and Alpha Dhabi Holding. The Abu Dhabi-based firms will take a 15% stake in OCI’s methanol business for $375 million. The transaction is expected to be finalized this year.
The delta variant of the coronavirus is taking its toll on Europe as vaccine skepticism shows no signs of going into remission, and promising oral treatments developed by Pfizer and Merck & Co have not yet been approved. With deaths now feared to top 2 million by March 2022, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the pandemic has become the leading cause of death in the region, whereby it helps to know that the WHO’s definition includes such countries as Russia, Ukraine, Tajikistan and Israel.
Concluding its ongoing strategic review, Hexion Holdings has agreed to sell its epoxy-based Coatings and Composite businesses to Westlake Chemical for about $1.2 billion. The deal is expected to close in the 2022 second half, following all approvals. The activities to be divested include the epoxy specialty resins and base epoxy resins and intermediates product lines.
Bayer has lost another appeal of one of its three lost Roundup cases. The Supreme Court of the US state of California late last week declined to review the verdict in the trial Pilliod v. Monsanto. The German group, which bought Monsanto in 2018 as the first round of litigation was getting started, petitioned for a review this past September.
UK CDMO Sterling Pharma Solution has announced the next phase of a multi-year investment at its site in Dudley. The £10m project will include new process development laboratories plus the installation of additional commercial-scale production equipment to meet the ongoing growth in demand for small molecule API manufacturing.
Reliance Industries and Saudi Aramco have mutually agreed to shelve plans for the latter to take a stake in the Indian company’s oil-to-chemicals (O2C) business. Reliance is now withdrawing its application with India’s National Company Law Tribunal to spin off the O2C business in preparation for the deal.
US president Joe Biden has nominated Robert M. Califf to return to the job he once held as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In a statement, Biden – who had been criticized for not naming a new FDA chief sooner, said Califf “has the experience and expertise to lead FDA during a critical time in our nation’s fight to put an end to the coronavirus pandemic.”
French drugmaker Sanofi is taking an equity stake worth $180 million in and entering a new strategic collaboration with artificial intelligence (AI) and precision medicine specialist Owkin.
Russian oil and rubber company Tatneft has signed a license and engineering contract with Italy’s Versalis for two new rubber plants in Togliatti. The value of the contract was not disclosed.
Danish pharma Novo Nordisk has agreed to buy Dicerna Pharmaceuticals, offering $3.3 billion for the US biopharma and its ribonucleic acid interference (RNAi) platform.
BASF is selling its kaolin minerals business to KaMin, a globally active minerals company owned by IMin Partners and headquartered in Macon, Georgia, USA. Part of BASF’s Performance Chemicals division, the activities had sales of around €155 million in 2020 and a workforce of 440 in North America, Europe and Asia.
Pharma giant Pfizer has filed an application with the US Food and Drug Administration seeking an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its Paxlovid-branded antiviral oral CovidD-19 treatment. Specifically, the company is seeking authorization for the oral drug to be used in treating mild to moderate disease in patients at a higher risk of hospitalization and death.
Dutch multinational specialty chemicals and ingredients distributor IMCD has agreed to buy Indonesia’s Megasetia Agung Kimia, boosting its presence in the country. Financial terms were not revealed, but the transaction will take place in two tranches.
CDMO Lonza is adding microbial development capabilities at its Visp, Switzerland, site. The company said the investment will support a capacity increase services targeting microbial-derived proteins. Both the expanded laboratory space and the new equipment should be in place by the end of this year.
Germany’s chemical and pharmaceutical industry continued on an upward curve in the 2021 third quarter, though growth tapered off, the industry association Verband der Chemischen Industrie (VCI) said in its quarterly report. Progress was hampered in part by tightening raw material supply, strained logistics and rising energy prices. Looking ahead, the association said, is for a “further cooling” of the sector’s business is on the horizon.
US healthcare company Baxter International is planning to spend roughly $100 million to expand a sterile fill & finish facility at Halle in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The plant is operated by BioPharma Solutions (BPS), a Baxter unit that specializes in partnering with leading pharma and biotech firms on the development and contract manufacturing of product for parenteral (injectable) drugs.
Abu Dhabi National Oil (ADNOC) and Borealis have signed the final investment agreement for their Borouge 4 complex at Ruwais, Abu Dhabi. The deal confirms their intent to spend $6.2 billion on the project, which will consist of a 1.5 million t/y ethane cracker, two PE plants producing 1.4 million t/y and a 100,000 t/y cross-linked PE plant.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has begun evaluating a formal application from US biotech Novavax for conditional marketing authorization of the company’s Covid-19 vaccine, now branded as Nuvaxovid. The EU’s health regulator said it will accelerate the approval process and issue an opinion “within weeks” if the data submitted are sufficiently robust and complete to show the efficacy, safety and quality of the vaccine.
In a decision that could sound a cautionary note for other countries hoping to boost Covid-19 vaccination numbers this way, a US appellate court has put a temporary hold on US president Joe Biden’s plan to introduce a vaccine mandate through an executive order called the Emergency Temporary Standard on Vaccination and Testing (ETS).
Singapore’s Hafnia has agreed to buy all outstanding shares in Denmark’s Chemical Tankers Inc. (CTI) – formerly known as Navig8 Chemical Tankers – taking control of the latter’s fleet of 32 IMO II product/chemical tankers. Hafnia said once the transaction closes, expected by Feb. 1, 2022, it will be the world’s largest operator of product and chemical tankers, owning 133 vessels as well as managing more than 230 others.
Lanxess has inaugurated a new plant at Nantong, China, to make its environmentally friendly water-based compounds. The Pellart-branded compounds belong to the company’s Urethane Systems (URE) business unit that also produces their key component, polyurethane dispersions. Production capacity was not disclosed.
Spanish fertilizer group Fertiberia has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Swedish region of Norrbotten and its investment agency to develop a green ammonia plant. The project, dubbed “Green Wolverine”, will be located in Lulea-Boden and produce 1,500 t/d.
An unusually acrimonious dispute has arisen over patents – in particular for Covid-19 vaccines – in the US. The row between vaccine maker Moderna and its mentor, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH,) centers on the fundamental question of who owns the rights to patent a pharmaceutical product developed by a private company receiving state funds.
Shell has announced plans to scrap its dual share structure and move its headquarters from the Netherlands to the UK. The proposal will also see the energy giant lose its “Royal Dutch” prefix, becoming just Shell. It will, however, retain its listings in London, Amsterdam and New York.
Greaf, a Shanghai-based cosmetic ingredients developer and manufacturer, has appointed Yiğitoğlu as the exclusive distributor partner for their whole product portfolio in Turkey.
Another US healthcare business is being split into separate parts or separated from other parts of a diverse group. First General Electric, with its health segment, went on the chopping block. This time the axe will hit the venerable Johnson & Johnson, founded in 1886 a maker of surgical dressings.
Swiss specialty chemicals company Sika has agreed to buy MBCC Group, formerly BASF’s construction chemicals business, from an affiliate of private equity company Lone Star Funds for €5.2 billion. Sika described the deal as “highly complementary” and added that it expects the addition of MBCC’s portfolio to push sales above €12.3 billion by 2023.
Liam Condon, head of Bayer CropScience, will resign his position at the end of 2021 and will be succeeded on Jan.1, 2022 by Rodrigo Santos, chief operating officer of the Bayer agrochemicals business. Three months later, Condon will move to London-headquartered chemical company Johnson Matthey as its new CEO.
French pharma Sanofi is investing $60 million in Gyroscope Therapeutics, a UK-based clinical-stage gene therapy company focused on eye diseases. Sanofi will initially invest $40 million, with the remaining funds contingent on a future qualifying investment round and the satisfaction of certain closing conditions.
DSM has announced plans to build a large-scale plant to make its Bovaer novel methane-reducing feed additive for cows at its site in Dalry, Scotland. Engineering work has started and the plant is scheduled to start up during 2025.
German specialty chemicals producer Lanxess has joined the growing list of European and US companies seeking to unload their engineering plastics activities – in one way or another. In a Nov. 11 statement, the Cologne-based player announced plans to spin off its High Performance Materials business into an independent legal entity from January 2022.
MilliporeSigma, part of the German Merck group, has agreed to provide CDMO services for SaudiVax. The Merck offshoot will design a multi-modality manufacturing plant for the Saudi company, which is pursuing the development and manufacture of halal biotherapeutics and vaccines. Financial terms of the arrangement have not been disclosed.
With the receipt of all approvals, BASF and Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) have closed the sale of water treatment company Solenis to Platinum Equity. The transfer to the new private equity investor for an enterprise value of $5.25 billion includes net debt of around $2.5 billion.
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the Sustainable Markets Initiative (SMI) have announced that 28 companies, including the likes of energy industry giants Shell and BP, have pledged to grow the hydrogen market.
AstraZeneca has agreed to transfer its global rights to two drugs for treating patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) to Switzerland’s Covis Pharma for $270 million. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2021.
