NEWS OF THE WEEK BUSINESS
HEFTY DOSE OF VITAMINS FOR DSM Acquisition makes Dutch firm largest in life sciences specialties market
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OR ROUGHLY $ 2 . 2 4 BILLION,
DSM will buy the vitamins and fine chemicals division of Switzerland's Roche. With the ac quisition, DSM becomes the larg est worldwide supplier, by far, to the life sciences sector, overtaking Degussa, BASF, and Lonza. The move also allows Roche to shed its last nonpharmaceutical operation and concentrate on its core drugs and diagnostics businesses. "This is a takeover that fits in perfectly with DSM's aims," says DSM Chairman Peter Elverding. The company has set a goal of sales of $ 10 billion in 2005, with 80% of that in specialty chemi cals—a distinct change from the DSM of 2001, when petrochem icals made up 31% of the compa ny's $8 billion in sales. Last spring, DSM sold its petrochemicals operations to Saudi Basic Industries, giving it a tidy pile of cash to spend on build ing up fine and specialty chemi cals. Meanwhile, Roche put its vitamins and fine chemicals divi sion up for sale in February More than a dozen industrial and financial suitors expressed interest in the unit, despite the enormous fines levied on it by the U.S. and European Union follow ing involvement in a vitamins price-fixing cartel in the early 1990s. Under the deal, Roche will retain all liabilities from the vita min price-fixing case. According to Roche, the divi sion is the world's leading supplier of vitamins and carotenoids, with annual sales of $2.40 billion and 7,500 employees. Vitamins ac count for half of that. Fine chemi cals, including feed enzymes, citric acid, andultraviolet filters, account HTTP://PUBS.ACS.ORG/CEN
for 30%; carotenoids, including beta-carotene and lycopene, make up the remaining 20%. The additional sales will gjve DSM a big boost toward its 2005 goal. DSM already employs some 10,000 people in the life sciences who generate annual sales of $2.3 billion in areas such as pharma ceutical chemicals, nutraceuticals, polyunsaturated fatty acids, and enzymes. Some of Roche's vitamins are commodities, which are facing price and profitability erosion, concedes Elverding. However, in
MATERIALS
other areas, he says, "there is no price competition whatsoever. We have at least 75% of our prod ucts for which we will be able to maintain our margins." The deal is expected to close in first-quarter 2 0 0 3 . Elverding does not anticipate any problems with regulatory authorities. For DSM, he says, "these are new products—new markets —where cartel problems don't play a part."-PATRICIA SHORT
IN THE MIX Roche's vitamin powders will boost DSM's earnings.
RESEARCH
Superior Superconducting Films Of MgB; wo independent re search teams have suc ceeded in growing highquality, oriented thin films of magnesium diboride (MgB2), an advance that is seen as crucial for the development of a new, more efficient genera tion of superconducting elec tronic devices. Current niobium-based superconductor circuits must operate at temperatures near 4.2 K, which requires heavy cryocoolers. MgB2based circuits would operate in the 20-25-K range, which is achievable using a com pact cryocooler with roughly one-tenth the mass and pow er consumption of a 4.2-K cooler with the same cooling capacity. The two teams used differ ent approaches. One, led by Chang-Beom Eom, a profes
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sor of materials science and engineering (MS&E) at the University of Wisconsin, Madi son, deposited boron films using radio-frequency mag netron sputtering and then annealed the films at 850 °C in magnesium vapor [AppL Phys.Letl, 81,1851 (2002)]. The other team, led by Xiaoxing Xi, associate professor of physics and MS&E at Penn sylvania State university, Uni versity Park, grew MgB2 films from diborane (B2H6) and magnesium vapor at temper atures up to 760 °C [Nat Mater., 1,35 (2002)]. Darrell G. Schlom, a Penn State MS&E professor who is a coauthor on both papers, says the films of Eom and Xi are of comparable structural quality. These films are supe rior to earlier MgB2 films in that they are epitaxial—all
the crystal grains are lined up with the substrate's. Eom made his epitaxial MgB2 films before Xi, but they contain MgO impurities, which Xi's films do not. As a result, Xi's films superconduct at a high er temperature—39.3 Κ ver sus 35 K. "It's difficult to make clean films," Schlom notes, and Xi's films "are the cleanest in the world." Xi believes that his group's technique will be more suit able for the fabrication of multilayer devices. Indeed, superconductivity expert John M. Rowell of North western University, com menting in Nature Materials, notes that Xi's approach to film synthesis "promises to allow a breakthrough" in the fabrication of multilayer de vices based on MgB2.-R0N DAGANI
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