Business Concentrates AGRICULTURE
Versum, Entegris to form chemicals leader Downloaded via MIDWESTERN UNIV on February 11, 2019 at 05:37:56 (UTC). See https://pubs.acs.org/sharingguidelines for options on how to legitimately share published articles.
Planned merger will create a $3 billion-per-year supplier of high-purity materials for chip making Continuing consolidation in the business of supplying high-purity materials to the computer chip industry, Entegris and Versum Materials have agreed to combine in an all-stock “merger of equals” valued at $9 billion.
Intel, whose semiconductor plant in Chandler, Arizona, is shown here, will be one of the combined company’s top customers. The merged company will have annual sales of about $3 billion and be “the world’s first comprehensive and effective end-to-end materials solutions provider across the entire semiconductor manufacturing process,” the two firms say. With annual sales of about $1.6 billion, Entegris supplies materials, filtration and purification equipment, and fluid manage-
ment products to the electronics industry. Versum is a maker of deposition materials, specialty gases, and chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) slurries with sales last year of $1.4 billion. It was formed in 2016 when Air Products & Chemicals launched its electronic materials business on the stock market. The combined company, which will take the Entegris name, will be owned 52.5% by Entegris shareholders and 47.5% by Versum shareholders. Announcement of the deal, which is expected to be completed in the second half of this year, follows by just two months the completion of another merger in the electronic materials industry: Cabot Microelectronics’ acquisition of KMG Chemicals for about $1.6 billion. Both mergers make sense for US-based firms confronting a maturing market at home and growing competition from Asian materials suppliers, says Lita ShonRoy, CEO of the electronic materials consulting firm Techcet. South Korea, she notes, is home to high-quality suppliers that are increasingly looking outside their home market for business. And although Chinese companies still don’t offer Western-quality critical materials such as thin-film precursors, they are becoming proficient suppliers of less-critical process chemicals and wafer-cleaning formulas.—MICHAEL MCCOY
BY THE NUMBERS
$8.3 billion The value of BASF’s brand, making it the most valuable brand in the chemical industry, according to Brand Finance. The consultancy bases the values on likely future revenues attributable to the brand. The other chemical brands in the top five, in decreasing order, are Dow, Sabic, LG Chem, and DuPont. 10
C&EN | CEN.ACS.ORG | FEBRUARY 4, 2019
Start-ups pursue RNAi for pest control Three biotech start-ups have plans to produce and manufacture products based on RNA interference that they say can control crop-munching insects better than chemical sprays. RNAi can interrupt a target organism’s ability to produce key proteins. The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, a not-for-profit research institute based in St. Louis, has spun off a start-up called RNAissance Ag to commercialize RNAi technology developed at the center. TechAccel, a venture development company, provided early-stage financial and technical backing to RNAissance prior to the spin-off. TechAccel is also an investor in GreenLight Biosciences, a Medford, Massachusetts–based biotech firm that raised $50 million in early January. GreenLight is not new—it was founded in 2008—but TechAccel and other investors say the firm’s work on its lower-cost RNAi production platform has opened up pest control markets in addition to the high-value human health care markets it now pursues. TechAccel’s CEO, Michael Helmstetter, says RNAi pesticides can be delivered more effectively than chemical sprays, are less costly, and can reduce health risks to workers and the environment. “An RNAi insect control measure is highly specific to the target insect and is not toxic to other organisms,” Helmstetter says. Meanwhile, Renaissance BioScience, a yeast specialist based in Vancouver, British Columbia, has linked up with the University of British Columbia, the University of Manitoba, and the Canadian research nonprofit Mitacs in a three-year, $730,000 research and development project. The team will test the company’s yeast-based RNAi production and delivery platform in insect and animal models.—MELODY BOMGARDNER
C R E D I T: I N T EL
ELECTRONIC MATERIALS
