Business Concentrates PETROCHEMICALS
▸ Activists raise stake in Clariant Investors who are opposed to Clariant’s planned merger with Huntsman Corp. have raised their ownership stake in Clariant to more than 10% from 7.2% previously. The stake is held by White Tale Holdings, which comprises the investment funds 40 North and Corvex. The funds, in turn, are controlled by three New York Citybased investors. When disclosing their 7.2% stake earlier this month, the investors complained that a merger with Huntsman would reverse Clariant’s specialty chemical strategy.—MICHAEL MCCOY
Mideast complex advances Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) and Borealis are moving forward with engineering and design for the Borouge 4 petrochemical complex in Abu Dhabi. The project will consist of a mixed-feedstock ethylene cracker, polyolefins plants, and plants for derivatives beyond polyolefins. It will be integrated with an ADNOC refinery in Ruwais, United Arab Emirates. Borouge, a joint venture owned 60% by ADNOC and 40% by Borealis, has already constructed three petrochemical complexes. The most recent one, Borouge 3, started up last year. The current facilities have a total capacity of 4.5 million metric tons per year and about $4 billion in annual sales. Borouge 4, when it starts up around 2023, will bring capacity up to nearly 10 million metric tons. Because it will use mixed feedstocks, such as naphtha from the refinery, Borealis CEO Mark Garrett has called it “by far the most ambitious petrochemicals project that we, or ADNOC, have ever undertaken.” In addition to the new complex, the partners have agreed to add another polypropylene plant to Borouge 3.—ALEX TULLO
ENERGY STORAGE
BIOBASED CHEMICALS
▸ SQM invests outside Chile for lithium
▸ Avantium picks site for pilot biorefinery
Chilean lithium producer SQM is investing in mines and plants outside its home base as demand for lithium for electric-car batteries grows. Its brine extraction joint venture in Argentina’s Salar de Cauchari, with Canada’s Lithium Americas, has moved to the engineering phase. In a new project, the company will jointly develop a spodumene mine in Western Australia with Kidman Resources. The two projects will add a combined 65,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate-equivalent capacity by 2021. Demand for lithium is growing by 14% per year, SQM says, and will exceed 500,000 metric tons by 2025.—MELODY
The Dutch biobased chemical maker Avantium will locate a pilot plant for its Zambezi biorefining process at Chemport Europe, an industrial park at AkzoNobel’s site in Delfzijl, the Netherlands. The Zambezi process is intended to convert wood chips into glucose, lignin, and a mixed-sugar syrup as raw materials for the chemical industry. Last year, Avantium formed a joint venture with BASF to develop a biobased process for making polyester bottle resin.—MICHAEL MCCOY
BOMGARDNER
TRADE
▸ Duty imposed on glycine imports Geo Specialty Chemicals successfully petitioned the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative to remove glycine from the U.S. Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program. Removal subjects the compound to a 4.2% import duty. Geo, which claims to be the largest U.S. maker of glycine, says the action will prevent Chinese producers from exporting the chemical through countries such as India and Thailand that are GSP beneficiaries.—MARC REISCH
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POLYMERS
▸ Nylon instrumental in new harp string Evonik Industries and the Chinese filament maker NTEC have jointly developed a monofilament designed for instrument strings. Based on Evonik’s nylon 6,12, the
Evonik and NTEC developed their new monofilament for harps.
filament offers transparency for clarity and tone and a smooth surface for musician dexterity, Evonik says. The filament was developed for harp strings, the firm adds, but can be used to make strings for other plucked instruments.—MICHAEL MCCOY
INVESTMENT
▸ AkzoNobel adds to China peroxide plan AkzoNobel plans to double production capacity at an organic peroxide plant that it opened in October in Ningbo, eastern China. The company had started work to boost capacity by 40%, but it now plans to double the size. The plant is already the world’s largest producer of dicumyl peroxide, a material that strengthens polymers used in applications such as shoe soles and high-voltage cables. AkzoNobel is also building a peroxide plant in Tianjin, northern China.—JEAN-FRANÇOIS
TREMBLAY
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
▸ Merck to pay Gilead’s lawyer fees A California federal judge has ordered Merck & Co. to pay Gilead Sciences $14 million in attorney fees in a case involving Gilead’s Sovaldi and Harvoni hepatitis C virus treatments. In June 2016, the judge overturned a $200 million jury award
C R E D I T: SA L A D O R EC
MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS
OSO3H Merck had won in a patent infringement dispute involving sofosbuvir, an active ingredient in both drugs, after she determined Merck had lied. In December 2016, Merck won a $2.5 billion jury award from Gilead in a separate patent dispute involving the hepatitis C drugs.—MARC REISCH
INSTRUMENTATION
▸ Agilent opens German tech center Agilent Technologies has opened a $58 million customer and technology center in Waldbronn, Germany. The 16,200-m2 facility is expected to host 2,000 visitors a year in 25 lab, test, and training rooms. The Waldbronn site Agilent is adding focuses on high-performance liquid new labs, like this one already chromatography, miin Waldbronn, to crofluidics, and capa new technology illary electrophorecenter. sis.—MARC REISCH
BIOTECHNOLOGY
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▸ Sarepta, BioMarin settle dispute H2N Sarepta will pay BioMarin $35 million to settle a lengthy patent dispute over treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). The companies’ legal tangle centered on patents related to antisense oligonucleotides that allow a missing muscular protein to be made in boys with DMD. BioMarin also scores a 5% royalty on U.S. sales of exon-skipping compounds 51, 45, and 53 and an 8% royalty on European sales. The deal helps BioMarin recoup some of the roughly $840 million it paid in 2014 to acquire Prosensa, a Dutch biotech firm whose lead DMD drug, drisapersen, was later rejected by FDA.—LISA JARVIS
NATURAL PRODUCTS
▸ Start-up Enterin raises $12.7 million
C R E D I T: AGI L E NT
Enterin has raised $12.7 million in a series A financing round. The Philadelphia-based biotech firm says it will use the funds to complete a Phase II study of its lead product, ENT-01, as a treatment for Parkinson’s and other neurodegenerative diseases. ENT-01 is a derivative of squalamine, an aminosterol discovered in the tissues of the dogfish shark by Enterin cofounder
H N H
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and Georgetown University professor Michael Zasloff. According to Enterin, the compound can slow the progression of Parkinson’s by preventing the accumulation of α-synuclein.—MICHAEL MCCOY
PHARMACEUTICALS
▸ GSK reorganizes U.K. manufacturing GlaxoSmithKline says it will spend more than $160 million to boost the manufacture of respiratory and HIV medicines at its sites in Ware and Barnard Castle, England, and Montrose, Scotland. Separately, the firm says it may sell off its cephalosporin antibiotics business, including manufacturing assets in Barnard Castle and Ulverston, England, and Verona, Italy. GSK will continue to make other antibiotics such as Augmentin and conduct research on new antibiotics. In another move, the firm plans to sell off its Horlicks drink brand in the U.K. and close its Horlicks production site in Slough, England. GSK is also exploring the sale of other food brands.—ALEX SCOTT
Business Roundup
such as gene duplication and translocation.
▸ DSM has picked the Chinese firm Nanjing Cosmos Chemical to produce two new skin care active ingredients. Cosmos’s plant in Maanshan, China, will make DSM’s ultraviolet filters Parsol Max and Parsol Shield, both used in the formulation of skin care creams and sunscreens.
▸ Alcami will relocate its headquarters from Wilmington to Durham, both in North Carolina. The drug custom development and manufacturing firm says the move will allow it to access clients and talent in Research Triangle Park.
▸ Amgen and Array BioPharma are joining to develop small molecules for autoimmune disorders discovered through Array’s chemistry and early lead-development platforms. Array will provide medicinal chemistry; Amgen is responsible for clinical development and commercialization.
▸ Shire has acquired worldwide rights to a Novimmune bispecific antibody in preclinical development for the treatment of hemophilia A. Shire says the compound is the sort it expects to develop in a rare-disease research center that’s set to open in Cambridge, Mass., in 2019.
▸ PeptiDream and Kleo Pharmaceuticals will jointly develop small-molecule immuno-oncology therapies. Tokyo-based PeptiDream will use its discovery platform to identify macrocyclic/ constrained peptides against oncology targets selected by Kleo.
▸ Teijin will expand capacity for its Twaron p-aramid fiber at its plant in Emmen, the Netherlands. To be completed early in 2019, the project will involve new, more automated spinning technology, Teijin says.
▸ Evonik Industries has launched a crowdsourcing competition for students aimed at finding new materials for the personal care market. Last year, the German firm held a similar contest seeking friction-reduction techniques for its lubricant additives business. ▸ BASF will join with Israeli genetics firm Kaiima Bio-Agritech in an effort to discover herbicide resistance traits for crops. The project will use Kaiima’s non-GMO breeding tool, which relies on a plant’s own DNA to induce genomic modifications
JULY 24, 2017 | CEN.ACS.ORG | C&EN
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