Kingchem Life Science, a US subsidiary of China’s Kingchem Liaoning Chemical, has spent more than $3 million to buy Apiscent Laboratories.

Located in St. Francis, Wisconsin, USA, Apiscent produces flavors, fragrances and pharmaceutical ingredients. It was formerly known as Fontarome Chemical and changed its name to Apiscent Laboratories in May 2014.

Kingchem CEO, Stephen Wang said owning assets in the US was Kingchem’s next natural step in its drive to better serve both is US and global customers, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector. The acquisition gives Kingchem its initial R&D and GMP-manufacturing capabilities in the country.

A new company, Kingchem Laboratories, will continue to employ all of Apiscent’s staff with plans to hire at least 10 new people in the coming months for areas including quality assurance, R&D, and production. It also plans to invest at least $2 million in the Wisconsin plant over the next one-to-two years to upgrade equipment, expand capacity and construct a new GMP kilo lab.

Kingchem has manufacturing, R&D, logistics and sales operations across five locations in China and in the US, where its headquarters is at Allendale, New Jersey. It offers contract development and manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, specialty chemical, electronic chemical and nutrition industries with core technologies in fluorination, chlorination, hydrogenation and organometallic reactions along with heterocycle and chiral chemistries.