US oilfield services giant Baker Hughes has agreed to form a joint venture in Saudi Arabia that will focus on providing oilfield and industrial chemicals. Baker Hughes will hold the majority 51% stake, while partner Dussur – a Saudi government company established in 2014 for the development of strategic industrial investments – will own the remaining 49%.
Swiss pharma powerhouse Novartis is merging its pharmaceuticals and oncology businesses into a new unit called Innovative Medicines (IM). The restructuring that will create separate US and International commercial organizations is expected to increase focus, strengthen competitiveness and drive synergies in high-value medicines.
Neste has announced its intention to conduct a feasibility study on installing new capacity for processing liquefied waste plastic at its refinery in Porvoo, Finland. The move is part of plans to commercialize its chemical recycling technology.
Spanish energy and chemicals group Cepsa has unveiled its Positive Motion strategy that aims to turn the company into Iberia’s leader in terms of sustainable mobility and energy.
Sanofi has announced it will list its Active Pharmaceutical ingredients company EuroAPI on the Euronext stock exchange in Paris on May 6. Each of the French drugmaker’s shareholders will receive one share in EuroAPI for 23 Sanofi shares in addition to a cash dividend of €3.33 per Sanofi share.
German specialty chemicals producer Evonik has streamlined its Health Care businesses line, grouped under its Nutrition & Care division, to sharpen the market focus. The realignment divides its portfolio into three new lines: Drug Delivery & Product, Drug Substance and Health Solutions, each building on on core competencies and differentiated technologies.
Solvay has reached full and final financial settlement with China’s HySci (Tianjin) Specialty Materials over a patent infringement suit for rare earth oxides.
Jazz Pharmaceuticals has agreed to sell its sleep-disorder treatment Sunosi to Axsome Therapeutics as it focuses on oncology and neuroscience. Under the terms of the agreement, Jazz will pay Axsome $53 million upfront, as well as royalties on US sales.
European uptake of the Covid-19 vaccine made by US biotech Novavax has been slack, reports say, with little clarity as to who or what is to blame. Are delivery delays still a problem as they were early in the year or is the protein-based shot not resonating with the hard-to-reach population segments that reject mRNA vaccines as too new?
Martial Lecat and Philippe Combette will cease their functions within the Safic-Alcan Executive Committee on Apr. 1, 2022. At the same time, Combette, current Chairman of Safic-Alcan, will hand over the presidency of the group to Yann Lissillour. Lectat and Combette joined Safic-Alcan in June and October 1988 respectively.
French drugmaker Sanofi has signed an exclusive worldwide collaboration agreement with IGM Biosciences, a clinical-stage biotechnology company. The deal focuses on creating and developing and commercializing engineered IgM antibody antagonists against three oncology targets, along with three immunology/inflammation targets.
US chemical company Eastman has entered into exclusive negotiations with Port-Jérôme-sur-Seine in Normandy, France, as the location for a proposed chemical recycling facility. Eastman plans to invest up to $1 billion in the facility that will process about 160,000 t/y of hard-to-recycle polyester waste.
Peter Vannacker will step into his new role as CEO of LyondellBasell (LYB) on May 23. The company's Board of Directors appointed the 55-year-old German-Belgian dual national to the position in December 2021.
Global Sciences, a Canadian multinational consumer goods company that also specializes in cannabidiol (CBD) products, has executed a binding letter of intent to buy Pure BioPlastics from Pure Vision Technology. The move follows six months of due diligence and discovery between the companies.
US engineering group KBR and ExxonMobil Catalysts and Licensing are to work together to enhance technology for propane dehydrogenation (PDH). Under the terms of the collaboration, ExxonMobil’s proprietary catalyst technology will be combined with KBR’s proprietary K-PRO process that produces propylene from propane.
Bayer CEO Werner Baumann will face a fresh leadership challenge at the company’s annual general meeting scheduled for Apr. 29. Singapore-based Temasek Holdings, which is said to have helped the German group stem its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto in 2018, has soured on the costly and still controversial acquisition and sees Baumann as having bungled it.
The Covid-19 vaccine Covifenz made by Canada’s Medicago, approved for use in the country in February, has been rejected for review by the World Health Organization (WHO) on grounds that the company is partly owned by tobacco company Philip Morris.
Huntsman has managed to rebuff a move by activist investor Starboard Value to appoint four members to the chemical company’s board. According to preliminary results from Huntsman’s annual meeting on Mar. 25, shareholders voted to elect all 10 of Huntsman’s nominated directors.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has criticized Western governments’ race to replace Russian oil, gas and coal imports with “any available alternate fossil-based fuel “in the wake of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Retreating from plans to move toward renewable energy could fuel the world's "mutually assured destruction" through climate change as much as a war, he stressed.
Algerian firms Asmidal, a subsidiary of state-owned oil group Sonatrach, and Manal have signed an agreement with Chinese firms Wuhuan Engineering and Yunnan Tain'An Chemical to form a joint venture for an integrated phosphates project. The new company – Algerian Chinese Fertilizers – will be owned 56% by the Algerian partners and 44% by the Chinese.
French firm Roquette has announced plans to spend €25 million to upgrade its liquid and powder polyols plant in Lestrem between 2022 and 2024. Roquette said the investment will strengthen its position as a leader in polyols and establish a strong reliable supply in the long term.
Chinese oil and petrochemicals giant Sinopec is planning what it says is its highest capital spending budget in corporate history for 2022 after posting its highest profit in a decade in 2021. In a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange, the group said it expects to spend 198 billion yuan ($31.10 billion) this year, 18% more than last year.
Fujifilm Irvine Scientific, part of Japan’s Fujifilm Holdings, will acquire Shenandoah Biotechnology, a US-based, privately held manufacturer of recombinant proteins. Financial terms of the deal, which is expected to close later this month, were not disclosed.
TotalEnergies announced on Mar. 22 that it would stop buying Russian oil by the end of 2022 and refrain from concluding any new investment projects in the country. A day later, it modified the announcement, saying that the decision does not apply to natural gas.
Dutch-based multinational distributor Barentz will acquire Unipex, a French-headquartered distributor of life science and specialty chemicals, for an undisclosed sum. The purchase of the Paris-based group strengthens Barentz’ presence in France and immediately complements its European network. It also provides a stepping stone for Barentz in North Africa.
Flamma Group, a company specializing in producing and commercializing small molecule APIs for the life science industry, as well as being a CDMO for new chemical entities and late-stage intermediates, is to acquire a third manufacturing site in Italy as of April.
Saudi Aramco, world‘s largest oil company, plans to participate in developing a major integrated refinery and petrochemical complex in Northeast China. It has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Chinese state-owned chemicals giant Sinopec for potential downstream collaboration on projects in the People’s Republic.
PVC producer Vynova is replacing the gas boilers it uses in its purification processes. The Belgian company recently installed a state-new hydrogen-fired steam boiler system at its Tessenderlo headquarters site and plans to add a second identical unit by the end of 2022.
Austrian oil, gas and chemicals group OMV has outlined its Strategy 2030, which will see it transform into a sustainable fuels, chemicals, and materials company with a strong focus on the circular economy. The company said the plans represent the most fundamental strategic shift in its history.
The US Food and Drug Administration has scheduled a virtual meeting of its scientific advisory panel for Apr. 6 to discuss the prospect of future Covid-19 boosters and the process for updating existing vaccines. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will participate.
Swiss CDMO Lonza has signed an agreement for the large-scale manufacture of the main drug intermediate for Swedish specialty pharma Oasmia’s investigational cancer drug candidate Cantrixil.
Swedish-Swiss technology conglomerate ABB has won a contract from NatureWorks to automate the bioplastics producer’s proposed greenfield polylactic acid (PLA) plant in Thailand. NatureWorks is planning to spend more than $600 million on the facility in Nakhon Sawan province, which will ferment and distill plant-based sugars and convert them first to lactic acid, then lactide and polymerize them into Ingeo PLA.
Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) is suing AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals, alleging that the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker’ Imfinzi to treat lung and bladder cancer infringes several patents related to its blockbuster Opdivo.
French API specialist Seqens is investing what it says is a multi-million-dollar sum in its US research and development laboratory at Devens, Massachusetts. The company said the improvements will increase its R&D capability and productivity in the US and strengthen its global network. Completion of the project is expected in October 2022.
Gearing up for a potential proxy fight at its Mar. 25 annual meeting, Huntsman has written to its shareholders urging them to vote for the company’s nominated directors as it hopes to head off activist investor Starboard Value.
