Business Concentrates MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
▸ Lithium-sulfur to power e-scooter Oxis Energy, a U.K.-based battery developer, is partnering with Denmark’s Lithium Balance to make a lithium-sulfur battery
A researcher at Oxis’s labs in Oxfordshire, England, places battery cells on a testing platform. for electric scooters. The pair aims to introduce the battery in China by 2018. Their prototype is 60% lighter than lead batteries and goes further on a charge, Oxis says. China is home to 30 million electric scooters, of which 98% use lead acid batteries. Separately, CAMX Power has granted Johnson Matthey a license to use its CAM-7 nickel-based cathode materials in lithium-ion batteries.—ALEX SCOTT
BIOBASED MATERIALS
▸ Bioisobutene worth it for L’Oreal French start-up Global Bioenergies has secured $10 million from the European Union to work with cosmetics firm L’Oreal and other partners on a commercial route to biobased isobutene. L’Oreal is seeking raw materials with a lighter environmental footprint. Bioisobutene has less than half the carbon footprint of isobutene made from petrochemicals, Global Bioenergies claims. The partners plan to open a 50,000-metric-ton-per-year bioisobutene plant in 2019 that uses sugar beet residue and forestry waste as feedstocks.—ALEX
SCOTT
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C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | JUNE 20, 2016
Senator scrutinizes DowDuPont merger As Dow Chemical and DuPont set July 20 as the date for shareholder votes on their massive, $130 billion merger, Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R) is calling on the Department of Justice to examine the deal. In a letter to Renata Hesse, principal deputy assistant attorney general for DOJ’s antitrust division, Grassley expresses concern that the transaction would decrease competition in the agricultural chemical and seed sectors and raise barriers for small, innovative firms trying to break into the market. He notes that the Dow-DuPont deal is part of a larger consolidation wave that includes ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta and Bayer’s bid for Monsanto. “I urge the antitrust division to conduct careful analysis of this proposed transaction to ensure that a competitive market in the agricultural biotechnology and seed industry is not impacted,” he writes. Earlier this year, Grassley expressed concern that jobs would leave Iowa, where DuPont’s Pioneer seed business is headquartered, and threatened antitrust hearings. Dow and DuPont later pledged to keep a business and R&D center in the state.—ALEX TULLO
SUSTAINABILITY
inkjet colorants, and other areas.—MI-
▸ GreenMantra raises money, opens plant
CHAEL MCCOY
The Canadian start-up GreenMantra Technologies has raised more than $4 million in its third round of venture capital funding. Founded in 2010, the firm uses what it calls a proprietary catalytic system to transform hard-to-recycle polyolefin products such as grocery bags and shampoo bottles into waxes, greases, and lubricants. GreenMantra recently opened a 5,000-metric-ton-per-year plant in Brantford, Ontario.—MICHAEL MCCOY
MATERIALS
▸ British firm aids Shanghai Disneyland Shanghai Disneyland opened last week with colorful and futuristic structures built from materials supplied by the British chemical maker Scott Bader. The Chinese composites
INVESTMENT
▸ Chemical makers open analytical labs Hexion will build an analytical lab at its technology and business center near Houston. The firm says the expansion will accommodate chromatography, spectroscopy, rheology, microscopy, and materials characterization to support its epoxy, phenolic, and coatings resins division and its forest products division. Separately, Cabot will set up new labs at its Asia region headquarters in Shanghai. To employ more than 30 researchers, the analytical and application testing labs will support business in activated carbon, fumed metal oxides,
The Tomorrowland section of Shanghai Disneyland features spaceships crafted of Scott Bader resin and coating. fabricator E-Grow used Scott Bader’s urethane acrylate resin and polyester gelcoat to fabricate facades, model spaceships, rollercoaster parts, and outdoor furniture. The British firm says the gelcoat comes in eight custom colors and was specially designed to be fire resistant.—MICHAEL MCCOY
CREDIT: OXIS (BATTERY); SCOTT BADER (DISNEY SPACESHIP)
ENERGY STORAGE
INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
ucts using single-use bioreactors.—ANN
▸ France fines Total for fatal explosion
THAYER
OUTSOURCING
A French court has found Total responsible for causing the death of two of its employees and injuring a further six from a 2009 explosion at its ethylene cracker in Carling, France. The firm was fined $225,000. A former Total manager was fined $22,000 and handed a one-year suspended sentence. The court rejected Total’s defense of human error and found that the explosion could have been prevented if flame detectors had been working. Total closed the facility in October 2015.—ALEX SCOTT
BIOLOGICS
▸ Lonza to make Bluebird Bio drugs
quisition of Allergan’s generic drugs business. The combined annual U.S. sales of the branded versions of the drugs involved are about $3.5 billion, the firms say.—RICK
MULLIN
▸ Two pharma service companies revamp The contract research firm BioDuro has relaunched following its merger with Formex. Based in San Diego and operating mostly in China, BioDuro was acquired by PPD in 2009 but then reacquired by its founders last year. Following the merger with Formex, BioDuro now offers end-to-end drug discovery and development services, says CEO Cyrus K. Mirsaidi. Meanwhile, Frontage Laboratories has acquired two U.S. solid-dose drug plants from Sun Pharma. Frontage says the facilities will be the basis of a new contract development and manufacturing service called Frontida Biopharm.—MICHAEL MCCOY
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
▸ Aegerion, QLT merge to form Novelion Beleaguered Aegerion Pharmaceuticals will merge with a subsidiary of QLT to form a rare disease-focused company named Novelion Therapeutics. A group of inves-
F H N O
F Lonza has agreed to manufacture future commercial supplies of two lentiviral-based gene therapies for Bluebird Bio, a developer of drugs for genetic diseases and T cell-based immunotherapies for cancer. The two companies already have a multiyear relationship for clinical-scale materials. Now Lonza will build a dedicated production suite at its facility near Houston. The 9,300 m2 site, set to be completed in 2017, is designed to produce viral vectors and virally-modified cell therapy prod-
PHARMACEUTICALS
▸ Dr. Reddy’s picks up Teva portfolio The Indian generic drugmaker Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories has agreed to acquire eight Abbreviated New Drug Applications from Israel’s Teva Pharmaceutical Industries for $350 million. Teva is divesting the products as a precondition to closing on its ac-
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with sustainably sourced materials, the partners say.
▸ Johnson Matthey has acquired MIOX, a maker of on-site bleach generators for water treatment use. Matthey says MIOX complements its expertise in advanced materials, precious metals coatings, and electrode development.
▸ Technip has acquired BP Chemicals’ Hummingbird ethanol-to-ethylene technology. Using a proprietary catalyst and operating under mild conditions, the process is lower cost and simpler than first-generation technologies, Technip says.
▸ Clariant has dropped its November 2015 agreement to acquire the European anti-icing business of Kilfrost. The firm blames “commercial reasons and challenges in obtaining regulatory approval in the U.K.” Clariant did acquire Kilfrost businesses in North America and Asia.
▸ Takasago International, a Japanese flavor and fragrance maker, has launched a new fragrance created with technology from the industrial biotech firm Amyris. Debuted at the World Perfumery Conference, the fragrance is made
NH N
O
Lomitapide
tors will sink roughly $22 million into QLT, bringing Novelion’s total cash to more than $100 million. Novelion’s portfolio will include two approved drugs—Aegerion’s Juxtapid, a treatment for a rare form of high cholesterol, and the leptin analogue Myalept—and QLT’s drug for rare eye diseases, which is on the cusp of Phase III studies. In February, Aegerion laid off 25% of its workforce after the arrival of competitors to Juxtapid.—LISA JARVIS
Business Roundup ▸ Ashland and the Brazilian chemical maker Oxiteno have formed a partnership to serve the agrochemical market in South America and Asia. The companies say they will supply their complementary portfolios of surfactants and polymers to agrochemical formulators.
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▸ Siluria will collaborate with Air Liquide on the development of new catalytic processes. Siluria says the effort will derive from its technology for making ethylene via the oxidative coupling of methane but focus on novel products.
▸ WuXi AppTec, the world’s largest contract research organization, has licensed Elsevier’s Reaxys and Reaxys Medicinal Chemistry data search platform. Under the five-year agreement, some 3,500 WuXi chemists will have access to Reaxys for searching data from more than 16,000 periodicals. ▸ Mitsubishi Gas Chemical and Nippon Kayaku have formed a joint venture to produce monoclonal antibodies at a MGC site in Niigata, Japan. Noting that Japan imports about $5 billion worth of biologic drugs annually, the companies say their venture will focus on biosimilars for the Japanese market.
JUNE 20, 2016 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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