The US Supreme Court has declined to hear Johnson & Johnson’ appeal against a $2 billion judgment in favor of 22 ovarian cancer sufferers who claimed they contracted the cancer from using the healthcare group’s talc products.
Bayer has announced plans to acquire Noria Therapeutics and PSMA Therapeutics, thereby obtaining exclusive rights to a differentiated alpha radionuclide investigational compound based on actinium-225 and a small molecule directed towards prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA).
In his interview with CHEManager, Hidde van der Wal, CEO of chemical distributor Barentz, talks about the company’s performance in 2020 and latest strategic developments.
Solvay has appointed Carmelo Lo Faro, previously president of the company’s composite materials business unit, as president of the materials segment, effective immediately.
Pembina Pipeline has agreed to buy Inter Pipeline for about C$8.3 billion in an all-stock transaction that would create one of Canada’s biggest energy groups with a pro forma enterprise value of C$53 billion.
US-based thermoplastics distributor Nexeo Plastics has acquired Italy’s Nevicolor for an undisclosed sum.
After losing Emergent BioSolutions as a Covid-19 vaccine production partner, AstraZeneca has been looking for a new CDMO to fulfil its $1.2 billion contract with the US Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA). Citing people familiar with the matter, the newspaper New York Times reports that the Anglo-Swedish drugmaker is now in talks with the US government about transferring dose manufacture to Catalent.
Lummus Technology’s Green Circle business is working with Polish tire producer Synthos to commercialize the latter’s biobutadiene technology. In a first step, the companies will develop a feasibility study for a plant producing 20,000 t/y of biobutadiene, which will form the basis for an investment decision.
As it ramps up production on three continents, US Covid-19 vaccine manufacturer Moderna is expanding its collaborations with CDMO suppliers in Europe, the US and Asia. At the beginning of June, the US biotech announced new supply agreements with Lonza and Thermo-Fisher. In late May, it inked new deals with Aldevron and Samsung Biologics in Asia to handle various stages of the mRNA shot’s production.
The EU Commission’s ambitious plan for a European Green Deal, launched shortly before the pandemic struck in early 2020, aims to make the continent the world’s first climate-neutral region by 2050. The goals spelled out in January last year call for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% up to 2030, compared with 1990 levels.
Following all approvals, German specialty chemicals producer Lanxess completed the sale of its organic leather chemicals business to TFL Ledertechnik on Jun. 1. The buyer is a global supplier of leather chemicals and a portfolio company of US private equity investor Black Diamond Capital Management.
US drugmaker Bristol Myers Squibb has signed an exclusive license agreement for Agenus’ proprietary bispecific antibody program AGEN1777, that blocks TIGIT and a second undisclosed target.
US chemical and specialty materials producer Eastman has announced plans to increase capacity of Naia filament yarn at its site in Barcelona, Spain. The company said the project will lift capacity by 30% by mid-2021 and more than 50% by the end of 2022, and will serve rapidly growing demand. Naia is a cellulosic fiber made from sustainably sourced wood.
BASF has wrapped up the sale of its Kankakee, Illinois production site for an undisclosed sum to an affiliate of US private equity group One Rock Capital Partners. The sale also includes the associated businesses of vegetable-oil-based raw material sterols and natural vitamin E, anionic surfactants and esters produced at the site, which are being rebranded as Kensing.
India’s Bharat Biotech, which specializes in infectious diseases, has announced it is adding new manufacturing capacity for its Covid-19 shot known as Covaxin, India’s first indigenous vaccine. The expansion will go on stream in this year’s fourth quarter at the Ankleshwar site operated by wholly owned subsidiary Chiron Behring Vaccines.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has validated the Sinovac-CoronaVac Covid-19 shot produced by Beijing-based Sinovac for emergency use, adding it to the growing list of already approved coronavirus vaccines. The others are made by Pfizer/BioNTech, AstraZeneca-SK Bio, Serum Institute of India, AstraZeneca EU, Janssen, Moderna and Sinopharm. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is currently reviewing the Chinese shot.
Harke Pharma has expanded its distribution partnership through Eastern Europe with BOAI NKY, China’s largest PVP and PVPP manufacturer.
In the drive to reach growth objectives, or to maintain and enhance “critical mass”, mergers & acquisitions (M&A) has been a theme for the chemical distribution industry for years. The industry leaders (by size and geographic reach) were all built through a series of such transactions. The practice is further trickling down to the smaller and mid-sized company layer of the sector, and more distributors espouse external growth options.
French industrial gases group Air Liquide is partnering multinational investment bank Rothschild & Co and environmental NGO Solar Impulse Foundation (SIF) to launch a €200 million growth, buyout and late-stage venture investment fund. The move is part of Air Liquide’s ambition to be carbon neutral by 2050.
Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has awarded design contracts for initial pre-front-end engineering and design (pre-FEED) work for a world-scale blue ammonia plant and six other chemicals projects at the Ta’ziz complex to UK contractor Wood.
The US Food and Drug Administration will allow the restart of CDMO Emergent BioSolutions’ still shuttered Bayview plant in Baltimore, Maryland, within the next few days, the newspaper Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has reported. The paper said it understands that contamination problems at the plant have been resolved.
Funds advised by New York investment group SK Capital Partners has bought Canadian coatings company Canlak and US-based Valentus Specialty Chemicals for an undisclosed sum.
Indo Rama Synthetics (India) Limited (IRSL), a subsidiary of global petrochemical producer and PET giant Indorama Ventures (IVL), plans to spend up to $82 million on upgrading equipment and adding capacity at its site in Nagpur, India. The investment foresees a new PET resin plant as well as additional balancing equipment and a large range of specialty yarns.
BASF and major German utility company RWE have signed a letter of intent to create a €4 billion, 2 gigawatt, wind farm at an undisclosed offshore location on the German North Sea coast by 2030. The chemical group, which will own 49% of the project to RWE’s 51%, will take four-fifths of the output, feeding energy mainly to its Ludwigshafen headquarters. The wind park is calculated to satisfy about a quarter of the site’s power needs.
US specialty chemicals producer Ashland has announced it will undertake a strategic review of its performance adhesives business, which could include a potential sale.
Belgian chemical company Solvay is investing an undisclosed sum in Invizius, a UK biotech start-up that is developing a proprietary anti-inflammatory solution for hemodialysis. The spin-out of Edinburgh University will use the funds to complete a First-in-Man safety study of its H-Guard Priming anti-inflammatory product, which is designed to address the side effects of dialysis and other extra-corporeal treatments.
Disappointed by San Francisco district judge Vince Chhabria’s decision to dismiss its proposed $2 billion plan to settle future claims that Monsanto’s flagship herbicide Roundup causes non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Bayer has said it may stop selling the glyphosate-based version on the US retail market.
German biotech CureVac’s protests against US export restrictions for ingredients it needs to make its Covid-19 vaccine CVnCoV seem to have borne fruit. News agency Reuters said the European Commission has persuaded Washington to temporarily waive some of the rules of the US Defense Production Act (DPA), which gives federal agencies the power to prioritize procurement orders related to national defense and to non-military crises.
The supervisory board of Poland’s PKN Orlen has given the green light for a major expansion of its olefins complex at Plock, estimated to cost 13.5 billion Polish zloty.
As it sheds more commodity-oriented products in its plastics portfolio, French specialty chemicals producer Arkema has announced plans to acquire Agiplast, an Italian compounder regarded as a leader in the regeneration of high performance polymers, in particular specialty polyamides and fluoropolymers. The deal is expected to close next month.
Plafco Fibertech, founded in 2017, was created as a spin-off from an EU-research project coordinated by Jukka Valkama, a professor at the Cooperative State University of Baden Wurttemberg in Karlsruhe, Germany.
LipoCoat is a biotech company specialized in ‘bio-inspired’ coatings that improve the safety, comfort, and performance of medical devices with a focus on health and nutrition.
US CDMO Charles River Laboratories has entered into an agreement to buy Vigene Biosciences, a compatriot gene therapy CDMO specializing in viral vectors. The acquisition is expected to close at the beginning of the third quarter of 2021. The purchase price is likely to be $292.5 million in cash, but the transaction also includes contingent additional payments of up to $57.5 million based on future performance.
AstraZeneca’s agreement to acquire Alexion Pharma for $39 billion, sealed in December 2020 and approved by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in April 2021, may not be a done deal after all. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on May 25 that it has launched an anti-competition investigation into the transaction.
In 2020, the weakness associated with global chemical supply chains was highlighted in a dramatic manner as Covid-19 was designated a global pandemic. As a result, small modular continuous flow plants are gaining attention as an appropriate solution to secure supply chains whilst ensuring safe, sustainable processes are implemented.
