BUSINESS CONCENTRATES
CELLULOSIC ETHANOL ADVANCES
U.S.-based CF Industries and Norway’s Yara have cordially walked away from merger discussions. The companies disclosed last month that they were in talks that could have led to the formation of a $20 billion-per-year fertilizer giant. “We were able to identify significant structural and operational synergies, but in the end it became clear that we would not be able to agree on terms that would be acceptable to all stakeholders,” says Yara CEO Torgeir Kvidal.—AHT
In a sign that a second-generation ethanol industry is emerging, one cellulosic ethanol plant has opened and another has licensed its technology. The Spanish firm Abengoa just opened a 25 million-gal-per-year facility in Hugoton, Kan. Built with the help of a $97 million Department of Energy grant and a $132 million government loan guarantee, the plant uses enzymatic hydrolysis to turn corn stover and other agricultural waste Bales of corn stover head into ethanol. A joint-venture company of DSM and into Abengoa’s new facility. Poet opened the first U.S. cellulosic ethanol plant last month in Iowa. And DuPont expects to open a plant, also in Iowa, by the end of the year. All three companies hope to license their technology. In the first such deal, DuPont has signed an agreement with government officials in Macedonia to provide its technology for a facility there.—MM
LILLY CONSOLIDATES PUERTO RICO PLANTS Eli Lilly & Co. is closing one of its three plants in Puerto Rico. Lilly attributes the closure of the site, in Guayama, to generics competition and a shift in its pipeline toward insulin and biologics. The site’s 100 full-time workers will be offered jobs at the firm’s two plants in Carolina, P.R. Lilly, which hopes to sell the Guayama site, will take a $170 million pretax charge in the fourth quarter.—LJ
EUROPE TARGETS HONEYWELL, DUPONT The European Commission has sent a “formal statement of objections” accusing Honeywell and DuPont of breaching antitrust rules by working together since 2010 to develop HFO-1234yf, a low-global-warming refrigerant for car air-conditioning systems. The two firms face fines of up to 10% of their
BUSINESS ROUNDUP KURARAY is selling its European polyvinyl butyral films business to the private equity firm GVC for $15 million. Kuraray needed to divest the unit, which has a plant in Germany and an R&D center in Belgium, to satisfy regulator concerns over its $543 million deal last year to buy DuPont’s glass laminating and vinyls business. CELANESE has purchased Cool Polymers, a North Kingstown, R.I., compounder of thermally and
ABENGOA
CF, YARA SCUTTLE FERTILIZER MERGER
annual sales. DuPont and Honeywell say they complied with European Union competition rules. The EC began its investigation in 2011 after competing fluorochemical maker Arkema complained that the two U.S. firms had locked it out of the market for the new refrigerant.—MSR
NEWLINK, GENENTECH HOOK UP Immunotherapeutics specialist NewLink Genetics has licensed NLG919, its indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) pathway inhibitor, to Genentech. NewLink will receive $150 million up front and is eligible to receive milestone payments and royalties. Genentech also will fund future R&D and manufacturing. IDO pathway inhibitors are small-molecule immune
electrically conductive polymers. Celanese says the purchase adds to its capabilities in polymer chemistry and formulation. DAK AMERICAS will expand capacity at its polyester staple fiber plant near Charleston, S.C., by 55 million lb per year. When completed next spring, the project will boost DAK’s North American polyester fiber capacity to about 500 million lb, according to the Mexican-owned firm. ILLUMINA has selected three
CEN.ACS.ORG
checkpoint inhibitors that can complement Genentech antibodies being developed as immunotherapies.—RM
ASTRAZENECA MOVES CLOSER TO CAMBRIDGE AstraZeneca has set up four new collaborations with the University of Cambridge. The partners already have an oncology research program, and AstraZeneca houses scientists at the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. The new collaborations include a three-year neuroscience program and university access to several cancer compounds in AstraZeneca’s pipeline. AstraZeneca will also support Ph.D. training and an entrepreneur-in-residence program. Last year, the firm decided to move its headquarters to Cambridge, England.—AMT
start-up companies to receive $100,000 apiece in support, access to sequencing equipment, and wet lab space as its new genomics incubator program gets under way. The start-ups are biopharmaceutical firm Encoded Genomics, agricultural technology firm EpiBiome, and diagnostics maker Xcell Biosciences. ABBVIE will pay a $1.64 billion breakup fee to Shire as a penalty for pulling out of the firms’ $54 billion merger agreement. AbbVie decided the deal presented too
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much risk after the U.S. reinterpreted tax rules to remove the deal’s fiscal benefits. Meanwhile, Shire plans to double its product sales to $10 billion by 2020. JOHNSON & JOHNSON will spend $200 million to accelerate its development and production of a vaccine against the Ebola virus. Discovered in a research program with NIH, the product combines vaccines from J&J and the Danish firm Bavarian Nordic. J&J hopes to manufacture more than 1 million doses next year.
