BUSINESS CONCENTRATES
SUMITOMO TO BOOST TOUCH-SCREEN PANELS
BASF, SUMITOMO JOIN FOR ANIMAL-FREE SAFETY TESTING
Sumitomo Chemical plans a 40% increase in its capacity to produce polymeric touchscreen panels in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. The company says the new production train—its third expansion of the plant since it opened in 2012 at a cost of $160 million— will start up in October. The panels are built into phones and other small devices that contain organic light-emitting diode displays. Sumitomo earlier said its main customer for the panels is Samsung.—MM
BASF and Sumitomo Chemical have joined forces to develop alternatives to animal testing for chemical safety evaluations. The two intend to start by establishing a new line of cultured cells to better assess chemicals. Driving the research are increasingly stringent rules affecting government registrations of agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals, they say. For example, provisions in the U.S. chemical safety law now awaiting passage by lawmakers would prevent animals from being subject to cruel and unnecessary testing. The European Union has banned most animal testing for personal care products since 2009. Consumer product companies also want to eliminate animal testing. Last September, Unilever linked with EPA to assess the safety of consumer products without animal testing. And in July, BASF joined with the French firm Poietis to develop threedimensional printing of skin cells for cosmetic ingredient testing.—MSR
Air Products & Chemicals is advancing plans to spin off its chemical business as Versum Materials. The industrial gases firm filed an initial Form 10 with the Securities & Exchange Commission indicating that it expects to complete the spin-off on the New York Stock Exchange by September or earlier. Air Products also unveiled the company’s logo (shown), which is intended to communicate moving forward, energy, and forward-thinking ideas taking flight.—MM
FUNDS FLOW TO FIRM’S VANADIUM BATTERIES UniEnergy Technologies, a stationary energy storage provider based outside Seattle, has raised $25 million from the
BUSINESS ROUNDUP DUPONT will close its pilot-scale cellulosic ethanol plant in Vonore, Tenn. The facility opened in 2010 to demonstrate technology developed by the chemical maker and Danisco, which DuPont later acquired. In October 2015, DuPont opened a much larger ethanol facility in Nevada, Iowa.
AI R PRODUCTS
AIR PRODUCTS MOVES ON CHEMICAL SPIN-OFF
Japanese financial firm ORIX and earlier investors. UniEnergy manufactures flow batteries for utility-scale applications. The batteries store energy in two tanks of vanadium-containing electrolyte with different levels of charge. The firm says its chemistry, developed in 2011 at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, overcomes the electrolyte stability problems of earlier vanadiumbased systems.—MMB
BRISTOL-MYERS HIV R&D WILL GO TO ViiV Bristol-Myers Squibb will sell its pipeline of investigational HIV medicines to ViiV Healthcare for $350 million plus potentially more than $2 billion in milestone payments. BMS, a pioneer in HIV drug discovery, says the deal is in keeping with
PPG INDUSTRIES has begun using titanium dioxide that China’s Henan Billions Chemicals produces with chloride process technology licensed from PPG. PPG says it is incorporating the TiO2 into standard grades of paint. CP KELCO, a maker of specialty hydrocolloids, will increase its pectin capacity in Europe to meet
growing global demand for the citrus-peel-based food thickener. The company recently completed a 30% increase in pectin capacity at its plant in Brazil. SAPPHIRE ENERGY, a producer of bulk microalgae, has raised $92 million from undisclosed investors. Sapphire was founded in 2007 with the goal of making algal fuels,
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its decision, announced in June 2015, to discontinue virology drug discovery. ViiV was formed in 2009 to combine the HIV drug businesses of GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer.—MM
ALS DRUG FIRM WINS TAKEDA’S BACKING In its first private equity financing, the start-up Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals has received $5 million from Takeda Pharmaceutical to advance therapies for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and other neurodegenerative diseases. Aquinnah says it is developing compounds that break down protein complexes found in the brains of the majority of ALS patients. The Cambridge, Mass.-based firm was cofounded by Manfred Weigele, a chemist who earlier cofounded Ariad Pharmaceuticals.—MM
but in early 2015 the firm said it would first pursue markets in high-value oils, aquaculture, and animal feeds. MERCK & CO. has extended a contract to purchase a proprietary enzyme from Codexis used to manufacture sitagliptin, the active ingredient in the diabetes medicine Januvia. The enzymatic synthesis
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was a 2010 recipient of EPA’s Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. BOEHRINGER Ingelheim will spend around $500 million to add mammalian cell culture protein drug production capacity to its site in Vienna by 2021. The Vienna site currently produces drug actives using microbial systems.
