BUSINESS CONCENTRATES
HUNTSMAN SWINGS AX AT PIGMENTS AGAIN
MERGERS JUMPED IN 2014
Huntsman Corp. is taking further action to cut costs and jobs at the pigments and additives business it acquired last year from Rockwood Holdings. Previous steps focused on titanium dioxide operations. Now the firm is restructuring color pigments in an effort to save $20 million annually. Plants will be closed in Cartersville, Ga.; East St. Louis, Ill.; King of Prussia, Pa.; and Hainhausen, Germany. About 120 jobs will be lost. In total, Huntsman expects to save more than $175 million. It plans to spin the pigments business off as a separate company sometime next year.—MM
Portfolio restructuring made for a hot climate for chemical deals in North America in 2014, and the heat will continue this year, according to an analysis and survey by the management consulting firm A.T. Kearney. The number of chemical businesses changing hands in North America shot up 24% to 279 last year. Global deal activity, on the other hand, dipped 2% to 1,035 compared with 2013. Deal values grew by 16% in North America, compared with 13% worldwide. “Focus on the core business is a key driver” behind the jump in deals, says Andrew Walberer, an A.T. Kearney partner. Notable 2014 deals include Ashland’s sale of its water technologies business to the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice for $1.8 billion and CF Industries’ sale of its phosphate fertilizer business to rival Mosaic for $1.4 billion. Eastman Chemical snapped up Taminco, an amines maker, for $2.8 billion. Financial investors were involved in just under 20% of deals last year, a level that has prevailed since 2009. But 50% of private equity acquisitions were of specialty chemicals firms, compared with only one-third in 2012.—MMB
WACKER BUILDS VINYL MONOMERS PLANT
WACKER
Wacker Chemie is building a plant at its flagship manufacturing site in Burghausen,
and automobiles. Bayer also plans to expand Thermoplast’s capacity. Separately, Bayer is closing methylene diphenyl diisocyanate and polyether polyol plants in Belford Roxo, Brazil, which employ more than 300 people. Making the polyurethane precursors at the site is too expensive, Bayer says.—AHT
RENMATIX GETS TOTAL AS NEW INVESTOR
Germany, that will Wacker’s Burghausen, produce vinyl neodecanoate and vinyl Germany, site, where it is building laurate, specialty a specialty monomers for dismonomers plant. persible polymer powders used in tile adhesives and other binders. The company says the plant will cost about $9 million and have capacity for 3,800 metric tons per year when it opens next quarter.—MM
BAYER GIVETH, BAYER TAKETH AWAY Bayer MaterialScience has purchased Thermoplast Composite, a German specialist in thermoplastic fiber composites. Bayer MaterialScience is active in polyurethane composites and wants to explore composites of its other major product, polycarbonate, in uses such as electronics, hardware,
The French energy giant Total has invested in the cellulosic sugar technology developer Renmatix and signed a development agreement that will enable it to explore using Renmatix’s process to make feedstock for biobased products. Total also gets a seat on the King of Prussia, Pa.-based firm’s board. In 2013, BASF signed a similar agreement with Renmatix. The Total investment is part of a Renmatix fundraising program intended to bring in at least $50 million.—MSR
BIOTECHS SPAR OVER ALGAE Solazyme has asked a U.S. federal court to uphold an arbitration award of $2.3 million and intellectual property developed with former partner Roquette. The two had a joint venture, starting in 2010 but dissolved in 2013, to research and market microalgae-derived ingredients for human and animal consumption. Solazyme says the venture got under way with its intelCEN.ACS.ORG
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lectual property, which Roquette promised not to reverse-engineer but did. In addition to the arbitration award, Solzyme is asking the court for punitive damages and an order barring Roquette from using its intellectual property.—MSR
PATHEON WILL ACQUIRE API PRODUCER IRIX The drug services firm Patheon has agreed to acquire the pharmaceutical chemical maker Irix Pharmaceuticals for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 1996 by former Roche executives, Irix produces active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), including highly potent and controlled substances, in Greenville and Florence, S.C. Following a merger last year with DSM’s fine chemicals business, Patheon operates former DSM API facilities in Regensburg, Germany, and Linz, Austria. Patheon executive Lukas Utiger says the Irix acquisition will add API capacity in the U.S.—MM
AMERICAN PEPTIDE GOES TO BACHEM The Swiss peptides producer Bachem will acquire American Peptide Co., an 86-employee business owned by Japan’s Otsuka Chemical. APC provides services ranging from catalog sales to large-scale manufacturing under FDA standards from sites in Sunnyvale and Vista, Calif. The acquisition “strengthens our position in the U.S., the
BUSINESS CONCENTRATES
BAVARIAN NORDIC
world’s largest peptides market, and provides immediate access to additional largescale production capacity,” says Bachem CEO Thomas Früh.—RM
teria. Myers and cofounder Lawrence Miller previously started Tetraphase Pharmaceuticals, which exploits tetracycline synthesis technology developed by Myers.—LJ
INTREXON GETS MAKER OF ENGINEERED APPLES
SUN ACQUIRES GSK’S OPIATE OPERATIONS
Intrexon, a synthetic biology company, has agreed to pay $41 million to acquire Okanagan Specialty Fruits. Okanagan recently won USDA approval for its genetically engineered Artic apples, which do not brown upon slicing, and expects to sell them in test markets late next year (C&EN, Feb. 23, page 5). According to Intrexon, freshcut fruits are one of the fastest-growing categories in the fruit and vegetable industry. In the past 14 months, Intrexon has been extending its technology reach into food, energy, and health care through acquisitions and collaborations.—AMT
India’s Sun Pharmaceutical Industries has agreed to acquire GlaxoSmithKline’s Australian opiates business. The business supplies active ingredients extracted from poppies grown in Tasmania and includes plants in Tasmania and Victoria. GSK said it no longer considers opiate ingredients a core business. Sun will offer to employ GSK staff affected by the transaction.—JFT
BMS TAKES OPTION ON CANCER VACCINE In a potential addition to its growing cancer immunotherapy pipeline, Bristol-Myers Squibb has paid $60 million for an option to license Bavarian Nordic’s Prostvac, a prostate cancer vaccine in a Phase III study. If BMS opts in to the program, Bavarian Nordic will get another $80 million payment. All told, the Danish biotech could see nearly
BUSINESS ROUNDUP ARKEMA has acquired the Italian organic peroxides formulator Oxido for an undisclosed sum. Arkema says the purchase of Oxido, which has annual sales of about $22 million, increases its network of organic peroxide plants to 12. BRASKEM has signed a six-month extension to its naphtha contract with Brazil’s state oil company Petrobras. Braskem, which needs naphtha to make ethylene, was facing contract expiration at the end of February (C&EN, Feb. 23, page 22).
$1 billion if Prostvac Bavarian Nordic manufactures is successful. The vaccines at its companies may headquarters in combine Prostvac Denmark. with other agents in BMS’s immunooncology portfolio. Last month, BMS inked deals with Flexus Biosciences and Rigel Pharmaceuticals to add small-molecule immunotherapies to its roster.—LJ
ANTIBIOTICS FIRM MACROLIDE LAUNCHES Macrolide Pharmaceuticals has launched with $22 million of financing to support the discovery of macrolide antibiotics. The start-up is founded on technology developed by Harvard chemist Andrew Myers, who found a way to synthesize macrolides from basic building blocks. The goal is to expand the efficacy of macrolides to combat both gram-positive and gram-negative bac-
POTASHCORP has agreed to purchase a 9.5% stake in Fertilizantes Heringer, a Brazilian maker and distributor of fertilizers, for $55.7 million. PotashCorp sees Heringer as an outlet for the output of its New Brunswick, Canada, potash facility, which is being expanded. DOWAKSA, a joint venture between Turkey’s Aksa Akrilik Kimya Sanayii and Dow Chemical, will collaborate on carbon fiber composite technology with Deakin University’s Carbon Nexus research center. The $34 million Carbon Nexus opened last
year near Melbourne, Australia. FERRO has paid $5.5 million to acquire TherMark Holdings, which uses lasers to permanently fuse marking materials to metals, ceramics, and other hard surfaces. Ferro has long supplied TherMark with marking materials. SOLVAY has licensed encapsulation technology from U.K.-based Revolymer. Initially, Solvay plans to use the technology to encapsulate germ- and odorkilling organic peroxides for sale to laundry- and dishwashing-tablet mak-
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JAPAN’S JSR BUYS U.S. BIOLOGICS MAKER Continuing a push into the life sciences field, Japanese chemical maker JSR will join with two partners to buy KBI Biopharma, a U.S.-based contract biopharmaceutical producer. Based in Durham, N.C., KBI offers manufacturing in mammalian-cellbased bioreactors with a capacity of up to 2,000 L. JSR, which will own the majority of KBI, says the acquisition will help it become a recognized player in the biopharmaceutical market. In recent years JSR has invested in the cell-culture and antibody purification businesses.—JFT
ers. But Solvay also plans to use the technology in veterinary and health care applications. BAXTER will acquire the German biotech firm SuppreMol in a deal worth roughly $225 million. The deal brings Baxter a pipeline of biologic immunoregulatory therapies for treating autoimmune and allergic diseases. It includes SM101, which has completed early Phase II studies in idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura and systemic lupus erythematosus. NOVARTIS’S operations in Japan have been suspended for two weeks by
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Japanese health officials over the firm’s failure to report in a timely fashion more than 3,000 cases of adverse effects experienced by Japanese patients who used the company’s drugs. Novartis apologized, noting that its failure did not jeopardize patients’ health. SANOFI’S former CEO, Christopher Viehbacher, has joined PureTech Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on commercializing innovative research. Viehbacher will take a seat on PureTech’s board, joining veteran drug research leaders from Pfizer, Merck & Co., and MIT.
