Following a multi-year collaboration, Japanese pharma Takeda has exercised its option to buy the UK’s GammaDelta Therapeutics for a pre-negotiated upfront sum, as well as future potential development and regulatory milestone payments. Takeda expects the acquisition to be finalized during the first quarter of its 2022 fiscal year.
As an additional means of tracing the spread of the coronavirus through the population, many countries and municipalities have begun analyzing sewage systems. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted more than $6 million in funding to support research on existing and novel surrogates for detecting and monitoring viruses in wastewater intended for reuse applications.
Synthomer has agreed to buy Eastman Chemical’s adhesives resins business for $1 billion in a move that will position the UK chemicals company as the global leader in adhesives technologies.
South Africa's Aspen Pharmacare aims to ramp up its Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing capacity to 1.3 billion doses per year by February 2024, from 250 to 300 million doses at present, the company has said.
With a capital injection of £850 million from parent company Saudi Aramco, petrochemicals and plastics producer SABIC has unveiled plans to restart the currently idled cracker at Wilton Teesside in northeast England. The company said the investment will help to implement the Kingdom’s new global carbon neutrality strategy called Saudi Green Initiative (SGI).
Ecolab, a US provider of hygiene and infection prevention products and services, has agreed to buy Purolite, a compatriot manufacturer of ion-exchange resins, for roughly $3.7 billion. Once the deal is completed, expected in the final quarter of this year, Purolite will operate as a separate global business unit, reporting into Ecolab’s Life Sciences division.
The second part of the 2021 CPhI Annual Report looks ahead to predict the pharma manufacturing, therapeutic and technology environment in 2030.
German chemical company Wacker has acquired a 60% stake in Chinese specialty silane producer SICO Performance Material for an undisclosed sum. The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2022 once the necessary regulatory and antitrust approvals have been received.
Ahead of the start of negotiations at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, the Solar Impulse Foundation led by clean technology pioneer Bertrand Piccard offers political and economic decision-makers 1,000+ solutions that help them meet more ambitious climate targets without compromising economic growth.
Catalent has announced a $230 million expansion project that will add three more commercial-scale viral vector manufacturing suites and associated support facilities and services to its US gene therapy campus in Harmans, Maryland. The CDMO said the investment is designed to meet growing customer demand.
Swiss drugmaker Roche has launched a genomic profiling kit that it has developed in conjunction with Foundation Medicine. The Basel-based company is supplying the kit across Europe, North America, South America and Asia.
US food and nutrition group ADM has taken an equity stake in Slovenian biotech Acies Bio. Financial terms and the size of the stake were not disclosed.
Novavax has completed the submission of real time data to the UK’s Medicines and Health Regulatory Authority for the authorization of its Covid-19 vaccine candidate. It would be the first protein-based shot to be approved by the British drugs regulator.
German engineering plastics producer Covestro is heading up a four-year EU-funded innovation project with 22 partners from nine countries to help erase the industry’s recycling deficits and close the material cycle for rigid polyurethane foam used in refrigerators and building insulation.
KBR is providing its proprietary technology to India’s ACME Group for a new green ammonia plant to be built in Oman. The facility, located in the Special Economic Zone at the Port of Duqm, will be integrated with solar and wind energy and have a capacity of 300 t/d.
Sweden’s Biotage, a provider of systems and products for drug discovery and development, analytical testing and water and environmental testing, has acquired the UK’s ATDBio for about £45 million on a debt-free and cash-free basis.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has begun a rolling review of US Merck & Co’s oral antiviral molnupiravir as a candidate to treat Covid-19. The EU drugs regulator said it would assess data as soon as it becomes available, before the company submits a formal application containing all the required safety and efficacy data.
Hamburg-based German distributor Biesterfeld has closed its acquisition of a majority stake in Singapore-based GME Chemicals. The distributor did not quantify the size of the stake but said it plans to purchase the remaining shares over a five-year period. The parties have agreed not to disclose details of the transaction, which will leave GME’s management team and employees in place.
Ineos subsidiary Inovyn is planning to build a large-scale 100-megawatt electrolyzer at its site in Cologne, Germany, to produce green hydrogen. In addition, the firm will upgrade existing hydrogen supply in Runcorn, UK. Both moves form part of Ineos’s plans announced on Oct. 18 to spend more than €2 billion on green hydrogen projects.
DuluxGroup, the Australian subsidiary of Japan’s Nippon Paint Holdings, is to acquire European decorative paint maker Cromology, creating a combined entity that will be the leading paints & coatings company in Asia-Pacific and the fourth largest worldwide.
Colorcon, a US supplier of specialty ingredients, film coating systems and functional excipients for the pharmaceutical and nutritional industries, has bought a majority share in India’s Ideal Cures. Financial terms and the size of the stake were not revealed.
Avid Bioservices, a biologics-oriented CDMO based in the US state of California, is building a new plant in Costa Mesa, California, as part of a plan to expand its cell and gene therapy portfolio. The purpose-built facility, to be located five miles from its current base in Tustin, California, will be dedicated to viral vector development and CGMP manufacturing.
Özlem Türeci and Uğur Şahin, founders and managing board members of Mainz-based BioNTech, were inducted into the Hall of Fame of German Research (Hall of Fame der deutschen Forschung) on Oct. 21. The awards ceremony in Wiesbaden, Germany, was organized by German pharmaceuticals, chemicals and life sciences group Merck together with Manager Magazin.
Air Liquide has raised its stake in H2V Normandy from 40% to 100%, renaming it Air Liquide Normand’Hy. The French industrial gases group, which bought its original stake only in January, said the strategic investment will support the development of a low-carbon hydrogen ecosystem in the Normandy industrial basin. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
As expected, Johnson & Johnson is taking its spun-off baby powder business into bankruptcy as a means of sidestepping a steadily moving avalanche of lawsuits claiming that its talc-based powder causes cancer, alternatively that it contains asbestos.
ECI Group (Engineers and Constructors International) has signed an Engineering Expertise Agreement with Shandong Yulong Petrochemical, a subsidiary of China’s Nanshan Group, to help realize a dual-stream plant with capacity to produce 200,000 t/y of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) and other associated high-pressure copolymers.
An international consortium comprising the alternative energy business of Oman’s OQ, Japanese conglomerate Marubeni, industrial gases group Linde and engineering firm Dutco has signed a joint agreement to develop a green hydrogen and green ammonia project in the Salalah Free Zone.
German plastics additives manufacturer Baerlocher is adding capacity for its calcium-based PVC stabilizers at Bury, UK. The company said it will expand output by more than 50% in 2022 by installing new mixing and granulation units.
In a sign that the administration of US president Joe Biden will be tougher on environmental offenses than that of former president Donald Trump, three companies belonging to petrochemicals producer LyondellBasell have received fines for improper operation, maintenance and monitoring of flares that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said used too much steam.
Following trials earlier this year of its proprietary technology for advanced recycling – also referred to as chemical recycling – ExxonMobil has now announced its intention to build a large-scale plant in Baytown, Texas, USA.
US chemical producer Milliken has completed the acquisition of compatriot Encapsys from the Cypress Performance Group (CPG), a holding company formed by Sherman Capital Holdings in the merger of Encapsys with IPS Corporation.
Haldor Topsoe, one of the largest suppliers of methanol (MeOH) catalysts and technology, has accepted HTE for testing its methanol (MeOH) catalysts in a p high throughput system under industrially relevant operating conditions.
Diverse developments taking place simultaneously in Covid-19 vaccines and treatments, especially in the US, are making it difficult for the average market watcher – and anti-vaccine enthusiasts – to keep up. While the past ten days have seen some concrete progress on boosters, following weeks of discussion, uncertainty lingers on some topics.
Germany’s Merck has opened its second production facility for viral vectors at Carlsbad, California, a move the company said significantly expands its global CDMO footprint. The new €100 million plant will more than double the company’s existing capacity to support large-scale commercial and industrial manufacturing for viral gene therapy.
Perstorp has appointed Patrice Pinsard as EVP Strategic Markets & Innovation, effective Oct. 18, 2021.
