Last week, AbbVie broke ground on a new Singapore manufacturing facility located in Singapore's Tuas Biomedical Park. The company will invest $223 million in the site which will add 24,000 l of biologics drug-substance capacity to AbbVie's global manufacturing network and support current products as well as emerging immunology and oncology compounds within its pipeline.
Hungary-headquartered specialty pharmaceutical company Gedeon Richter becomes a strategic investor of German biosimilars company Formycon via cash capital increase of 9.08% of Formycon’s share capital, which corresponds to €82.84 million.
Olon Group is building a state-of-the-art High Potency Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (HPAPI) suite at its Olon USA site in Concord, Ohio. This expands the company's capabilities for handling HPAPI, with investments totaling around €40 million ($43 million) in recent years.
In a move to meet the rising demand from the photovoltaic industry, Solvay is expanding the is hydrogen peroxide capacity of its Shandong Huatai Interox Chemical site in China, a joint venture (JV) with Huatai Chemical.
Leading Indian carbon black player Birla Carbon announced to establish two new carbon black manufacturing sites in Naidupet, Andhra Pradesh, India, and Rayong, Thailand.
German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim is investing €120 million in an upgrade and expansion of its facility in Koropi, Greece, that will increase the company's capacity to produce existing and new medicines. Main disease areas, Boehringer said, include cardio-renal-metabolic (CRM) diseases, mental health, and pulmonary fibrosis.
China-headquartered contract research, development and manufacturing organization (CRDMO) WuXi Biologics plans to increase the manufacturing capacity of its US facility in Worcester, Massachusetts to 36,000 l, 12,000 l more than the originally planned 24,000 l.
Solenis to invest €176 million ($193 million) in City of Suffolk facility expansion. The company will build a new 7430-square-meter (80,000-square-foot) production facility, packaging facility, and tank farm. This new facility will be used to grow the existing polymer product line and add additional capacity of this critical monomer to the existing supplier.
French chemical producer Arkema announced that it will become a shareholder of Tiamat, a start-up that designs, develops, industrializes and markets sodium-ion batteries, a new lithium-free technology. Tiamat was spun off from the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in 2017.
Nouryon has completed a production capacity expansion of nearly 50% for its Levasil colloidal silica products at its US manufacturing facility in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical has completed the construction of a pilot facility using a highly efficient process for producing methanol from CO2 at its Ehime Works facility, located in Niihama City, Ehime Prefecture, Japan, and has started operations at the facility.
BASF has completed its capacity expansion for key specialty amines manufactured at its US site in Geismar, Louisiana. The project, announced in June 2022, allows the company to increase production of polyetheramines and amine catalysts marketed under the Baxxodur and Lupragen brands.
Rising demand for sustainability-related products will create a huge growth opportunity for chemical companies.
At the end of last week, Belgian chemicals and recycling company Umicore held the groundbreaking ceremony in Changshu, Jiangsu province, China, for its new large-scale fuel cell catalyst plant.
Japanese manufacturer Asahi Kasei invests in Canadian startup Ionomr Innovations, known for its high-performance anion exchange membrane (AEM). The membrane has applications in cost-efficient and scalable green hydrogen production.
Capchem Technology USA Inc., a subsidiary of Shenzhen Capchem Technology Co., may invest €320 million ($350 million) in building an integrated carbonate solvent and lithium-ion battery electrolyte facility in Louisiana, USA.
South Korea-based contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) SK Bioscience wants to expand its vaccine manufacturing plant located in Andong, South Korea to approximately 4,200 m2 through joint investment with Sanofi.
UK’s Elementis, a global specialty chemicals company, will be opening a new unit in Portugal, featuring a center of excellence and R&D laboratory. The new unit, which will be headquartered in Porto and is scheduled to open in the first half of 2024, will support the company’s business segments Personal Care and Performance Specialties and also reinforce the current R&D capacity of the Elementis' laboratories in Asia and the Americas.
On Monday, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced £29.5 billion ($36.8 billion) of private sector investment in Britain at a gathering of global executives intended to showcase Britain’s appeal to global investors.
Novo Nordisk wants to make another major capital investment in production capacity for its diabetes and obesity therapies. The Danish drugmaker announced to spend more than 16 billion Danish kroner (€2.1 billion euros) starting in 2023 to expand its production site in Chartres, France, adding aseptic production and finished production processes and an extension of the current Quality Control Laboratory.
Ineos Styrolution, a styrenics producer, has opened a new world-scale ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) facility located in Ningbo, China, together with its joint venture partner Sinopec. The facility has an annual nameplate capacity of 600,000 tons.
Orion opens its first greenfield project – a carbon black plant in eastern China that will supply fast-growing demand in Asia.
AGC Wakasa Chemicals, part of Japanese group AGC, has completed a new large-scale production line at its Kaminaka Plant in Fukui prefecture, Japan, as it expects demand for agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals to grow steadily against a backdrop of population growth and improvement of living standards.
German chemicals and ingredients distributor Brenntag has opened its new facility in Maurice, Louisiana, USA. Strategically positioned along the US Gulf Coast, the new site will be the primary operations hub for Coastal Chemical, a subsidiary of Brenntag, in addition to serving other areas in the region, the company said.
AkzoNobel is investing €32 million in a new plant at its Vilafranca site in Spain, which will produce bisphenol-free coatings for the metal packaging industry in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). AkzoNobel expects facility to be operational by mid-2025 and to create around 40 jobs.
OCI Global, the world’s third largest nitrogen fertilizer and ammonia producer, is supplying Röhm, a leading manufacturer of methacrylates, with bio-ammonia for the production of methyl methacrylate (MMA), an important precursor for Plexiglas.
Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies unveiled its new $2 billion large-scale cell culture manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, North Carolina, US.
Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk plans to invest more than 42 billion Danish kroner (about €5.6 billion) starting in 2023 to expand existing manufacturing facilities at the company’s Kalundborg, Denmark, site to meet future market demands.
Olon, an Italian CDMO and API producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), plans to invest €10 million in a multi-year expansion of its production site in Mahad, India.
Serbian agrochemicals producer Elixir Group and German minerals producer K+S have signed a cooperation agreement for the production and distribution of crystalline water-soluble fertilizer mono-ammonium phosphate (MAP).
Aragen, an India, Hyderabad-headquartered contract research development and manufacturing organization (CRDMO) for small molecules and biologics, plans to set up a new biologics manufacturing facility in Bangalore, India.
Carbios announces that it has been granted the building permit and operating authorization for the world’s first polyethylene terephthalate (PET) biorecycling plant, allowing construction to start.
Brazilian chemical group Unipar Carbocloro will modernize its chlor-alkali plant in Cubatão, Brazil, with electrolyzer technology from Dortmund, Germany-headquartered Thyssenkrupp Nucera. The upgrade is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2025. According to Thyssenkrupp, Unipar will invest more than 1 billion reais (about €190 million) in the modernization.
LyondellBasell acquired its 50% share from De Paauw Sustainable Resources (DPSR) CEO Roy de Paauw and ING Corporate Investments. DPSR is a plastics waste recycling company based out of the Netherlands.
In Canada, Belgian materials technology and recycling group Umicore is proceeding with the construction of a 35 GWh equivalent battery materials production plant in Loyalist, Ontario, to cater to the North American electric vehicle (EV) battery market. Located at about 25 km from Kingston, the plant in Loyalist will be at the heart of Canada’s automotive technology cluster.
