The US Supreme Court is holding a special session today, Jan. 7, to deliberate on whether the administration of president Joe Biden can enforce a vaccine-or-test mandate for large private companies and a vaccine mandate for many healthcare workers. The review, which reflects inconclusive lower court decisions, is a departure from the normal proceeding of reviewing challenges to a binding verdict.
US biotech Amyris has formed a 50:50 joint venture with compatriot clinical-stage immunotherapy firm ImmunityBio to accelerate the commercialization of a next-generation Covid-19 vaccine. The companies signed a binding agreement for the venture last November.
German chemicals giant BASF plans to launch a corporate share buyback program worth up to €3 billion, beginning this month and stretching over nearly two years, until Dec. 31, 2023 at the latest.
Röhm has announced plans to spend a double-digit million euro sum to expand capacity in China for its Plexiglas polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) molding compounds. The company said the dynamic economic development of Asia’s automotive and lighting industries were key drivers for the expansion at its site in Shanghai, which will go on stream in the second quarter of 2023.
Huntsman has announced it will undertake a strategic review of its Textile Effects division, which is headquartered in Singapore and supplies dyes and chemicals to the textile and related industries. The review, which will include a potential sale, is due to start early this quarter. The US chemical producer did not say how long it would take, other than it “plans to move expeditiously.”
Germany‘s Heubach Group and US private equity investor SK Capital Partners have completed their acquisition of Clariant’s global colorants business and integrated it into a new Heubach Group. The share of the Clariant pigments business in Infraserv Höchst, which operates the chemical park at Frankfurt, Germany, was not part of the deal that valued the pigments portfolio at 800-855 Swiss francs.
In its second deal since becoming an independent company, Arxada – formerly Lonza Specialty Ingredients – has acquired Enviro Tech Chemical Services, a US manufacturer of proprietary and high efficacy antimicrobial and biocidal products. Financial details of the transaction, which closed on Dec. 22, 2021, were not disclosed.
In a departure from the accustomed geographical pattern of litigation against Bayer, investors based in Germany are suing the company for €2.2 billion ($2.5 billion). The shareholders are unhappy about the decline in the company’s share price on the back of hefty damage awards to US plaintiffs claiming that Monsanto’s non-selective herbicide Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Ineos Olefins Belgium has received an environment permit for its planned €3 billion shale gas-fed ethane cracker in the Port of Antwerp, which is now due on steam in 2026. The permit for the facility announced in 2019 and dubbed Project One, is the first step toward approval.
Invista Textiles (UK), a division of US nylon giant Invista, has signed an agreement with China Resources Yantai Nylon to license technology for a new plant in China. The companies did not disclose a timeframe for the project.
Between the Christmas and the New Year’s bells and on both sides, the international pharmaceutical and healthcare sector continued battling the coronavirus pandemic. In one of the most watched developments – most of which took place in the US – Novavax finally fulfilled its pledge to file final data to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Emergency Use Authorization of its protein-based Covid-19 vaccine during the year’s fourth quarter.
US food giant Cargill has agreed to buy most of Croda’s Performance Technologies and Industrial Chemicals (PTIC) business for €915 million on a cash-free, debt-free basis. The acquisition of the UK group will boost Cargill’s bio-industrial footprint, better serving manufacturers seeking greener ingredients.
Dutch-based multinational specialty chemicals and ingredients distributor IMCD agreed two acquisitions in late December, namely Polychem in Austria and RPL Trading in Australia and New Zealand. Financial terms were not disclosed.
BASF is selling its US-based attapulgite business to Clariant for $60 million. The deal expected to close in summer 2022 following regulatory approval also includes the transfer of a production facility at Quincy in the state of Florida.
The Life Science business segment of Germany’s Merck has won a €121 million US government contract to build a new plant for its “Hi-Flow" Plus lateral flow membranes used in rapid diagnostic test kits, including those for Covid-19.
Private equity group SK Capital Partners has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in French firm Seqens, at the same time merging portfolio company Wavelength Pharmaceuticals into Seqens to create a leading pharma CDMO with annual revenues of €1.1 billion. The size of SK Capital’s stake was not disclosed.
Crop protection producers Albaugh in the US and Rotam – headquartered in Hong Kong and listed on the Taiwan stock exchange – have agreed to merge, creating a global leader with sales exceeding $2 billion. Under the terms, Albaugh will pay roughly $197.5 million net of cash and debt for Rotam. The takeover will be executed between an entity in the Albaugh group and Rotam’s holding company.
US Army scientists working at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research attached to the US military medical center of the same name have hinted at promising results from early stage clinical trials with a newly developed vaccine they believe could be capable of targeting all coronaviruses, including mutations of the virus currently causing Covid-19.
Following a strategic review of its Health division in April, Johnson Matthey (JM) has agreed to sell a majority stake in the business to US investment company Altaris Capital Partners for an enterprise value of £325 million. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2022, subject to regulatory approval.
Infrastructure company Currenta, which operates chemical parks formerly belonging to the Bayer group in Leverkusen, Dormagen and Uerdingen, Germany, has come under increasing pressure as industry-critical groups accuse it of not paying enough attention to safety and not being straightforward enough about a discharge of chemicals-laced firefighting water into the Rhine River.
Following a recommendation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the European Commission has granted conditional marketing authorization to the protein-based Covid-19 vaccine made by US biotech Novavax. It is the fifth shot to be made available in all 27 member states and the first protein-based.
Novasep, a French CDMO, has announced a €6 million investment to increase and modernize manufacturing capabilities at its Chasse-sur-Rhône site to support new generation APIs in areas such as oncology, central nervous system (CNS) and infectious diseases.
Arkema is to double capacity for its Sartomer UV curable resins at its Nansha plant in China. The French multinational chemical company said the expansion will support fast-growing demand in Asia for cutting-edge solutions in electronics, driven by 5G technology, and in renewable energies.
The backers of Hexion Holdings have agreed to sell the company to private equity investor American Securities for $30 per share in cash. The transaction is expected to complete in the first half of 2022, following the closing of the sale of its Epoxy business to Westlake Chemical. That deal is still subject to shareholder and regulatory approval.
With the fast rolling wave of yet another Coronavirus variant sparking global concern, vaccine mandates, booster shots and efficacy studies are dominating headlines in the run-up to the year’s end, sidelining chemical companies’ news of progress toward net zero emissions two or three decades down the road. Worries are increasing that millions of people not only have not yet been vaccinated or that some of the vaccines are not protective enough.
Loxo Oncology at Lilly and Foghorn Therapeutics are collaborating to create novel oncology medicines based on the latter’s Gene Traffic Control platform. Under the terms of the deal, Lilly will pay Foghorn $300 million in cash upfront as well as making an equity investment of $80 million.
Technology supplier W. R. Grace has won a fourth licensing contract for its Unipol PP process technology from China’s Oriental Energy. The technology will be used in Oriental’s fifth PP line, which will have a capacity of 400,000 t/y. An onstream date for the new line was not given.
Clariant Catalysts is participating in Germany’s TransHyDE project AmmoRef, which aims to develop technologies and catalysts for ammonia cracking to facilitate future hydrogen transport.
After days of speculation, it’s now official. Australian biopharmaceuticals manufacturer CSL has grabbed for and won the hand of Swiss Vifor Pharma. The boards of both companies have unanimously approved the $11.7 billion public tender offer, which looks certain to be accepted by Vifor’s shareholders. Its largest, Patinex, with 23%, has already agreed to tender.
German chemical company Wacker and compatriot CDMO CordenPharma have agreed to jointly develop know-how and processes for manufacturing lipid nanoparticles (LNP) to meet growing market demand. Both companies will first build up R&D capacities at their respective sites – Wacker in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and CordenPharma in Caponago, Italy.
In the VAT 0002 extension trial investigating the safety and immunogenicity of the protein-based recombinant adjuvanted Covid-19 vaccine they are partly developing as a booster, Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline said the shot delivered a “consistently strong immune response” and was well tolerated, regardless of the vaccine it followed.
Peter Vanacker, currently president and CEO of Finnish refiner Neste, has been tapped to be the new CEO of LyondellBasell (LYB) starting at the latest in June 2022. He will succeed Bhavesh (Bob) Patel, who is leaving the company at the end of 2021 to become chief executive of W. R. Grace from January 2022. Vanacker will also sit on LYB’s board.
Danish biotech Novozymes and Italian engineering company Saipem have agreed to collaborate on the development and commercialization of an enzymatic carbon capture process, a biological alternative to traditional carbon capture.
German multinational chemical distributor Brenntag has announced plans to expand its site in Kędzierzyn-Koźle, Poland, to increase its service capabilities to customers in the animal nutrition and pet food industry. Proposals include adding a new production line and expanding storage capabilities by the end of 2022.
Dutch renewables specialist Avantium has finalized plans for what it said will be the world’s first commercial scale production facility for FDCA (furandicarboxylic acid), with a capacity of 5,000 t/y. With the last hurdle to fulfilling all financing conditions successfully taken, production of the precursor of high-end plastic polyethylene furanoate (PEF) is now slated to begin in 2024, a year behind schedule.
