Saudi chemical manufacturer Sabic has opened a European Pipe Innovation Center near its manufacturing site at Geleen, The Netherlands, complementing the company’s existing Pipe Innovation Centers in Saudi Arabia and China. Customised pipe material development, testing, sampling and validation capacities will enhance Sabic’s ability to collaborate with European pipe manufacturers and accelerate the adoption of certified circular polymers leading to more sustainable pipe developments.
Sandoz, a Swiss manufacturer of generic pharmaceuticals and biosimilars, has announced a multi-year partnership with Just – Evotec Biologics, the US subsidiary of German drug discovery and development company Evotec. The agreement covers the development and manufacture of multiple biosimilar medicines.
Lonza, a Swiss manufacturing company operating in the pharmaceutical, biotech and nutraceutical markets, has acquired Synaffix, a Dutch biotech focused on commercialising its clinical-stage technology platform for the development of antibody drug conjugates (ADCs), which offer widespread and targeted treatment potential against cancer.
A major consortium led by UK university Imperial College London and German chemical company BASF is to help make chemical manufacturing more efficient, resilient and sustainable. Imperial will receive £17.8m from the UK’s Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and industry partners under the EPSRC Prosperity Partnership programme in a consortium of organisations from across the chemicals value chain. The partnership on Innovative Continuous Manufacturing of Industrial Chemicals (IConIC), which is led by BASF, will pool its expertise to advance flow chemistry, a production technique where the required reactions take place continuously rather than in batches.
CRDMO Aurigene Pharmaceutical Services, a subsidiary of Indian pharma Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, has announced the construction of a development and manufacturing facility for therapeutic proteins, antibodies and viral vectors. As a first step of the investment plan, Aurigene is investing $40m in an R&D and pilot-scale facility at Genome Valley, a biotech park in Hyderabad, India.
Metsä Fibre, part of Finnish forest industry group Metsä Group, is planning to build a demonstration plant for a modified lignin product in cooperation with Austrian technology group Andritz. The aim is to develop the process to separate lignin from black liquor in pulp production and to further process it for new end-uses. In pulp production, lignin – which acts as a binder for wood fibres – is removed from fibres. It has traditionally been used for bioenergy production but has other potential uses. The technical assessment and development of the product for end-use applications is being driven by US material science company Dow. The high-performance bio-dispersant products produced in the demonstration plant could be used, for example, as bio-based concrete and gypsum water reducer in construction markets.
The Consumer Health Division of German pharma and biotech Bayer has launched a business unit focused on developing new precision health products across its range of everyday health categories. The aim is for people to take greater control of their own personal health through digital solutions that facilitate more informed choices based on personal insights and novel delivery mechanisms such as diagnostics, apps and therapeutics.
German specialty chemicals company Lanxess has doubled its production capacity for benzyl alcohol at its site in Kalama, Washington, US, to support the growth of its customer base in the Americas.
German chemical company Wacker Chemie has completed its $100m capacity expansion for vinyl-acetate-ethylene copolymer (VAE) dispersions and VAE dispersible polymer powders at its Nanjing site in China. The new dispersions reactor and spray dryer for dispersible polymer powders more than doubles Wacker’s production capacity in Nanjing, enabling it to meet growing demand, particularly from China’s construction industry.
UK sustainable technologies company Johnson Matthey (JM) and Norwegian hydrogen company Hystar have signed a three-year strategic supply agreement to ramp up renewable (green) hydrogen production. JM will supply membrane electrode assemblies for Hystar’s electrolysers.
3 petaflops
German chemicals company BASF has started up a new supercomputer at its Ludwigshafen site. Manufactured by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, it can achieve three petaflops (three quadrillion floating point operations per second) of computing power. Applications include working out the most promising polymer structures from thousands of possibilities and considerably shortening the development time for innovative molecules and chemical compounds, thereby accelerating the market launch of new products.
€35m
German science and technology company Merck KGaA is investing €35m in biosafety testing at its Scottish sites in Glasgow and Stirling. Biosafety testing is a critical step in the drug development and manufacturing process that ensures drugs are safe, efficacious and meet regulatory requirements. The expansion will create nearly 500 new jobs.
30-fold
Equipment company Cellular Origins, part of the TTP Group, based in the UK, has launched Constellation, a closed, configurable, robotic platform to automate the manufacturing of advanced therapies without significant process redevelopment. Constellation combines aseptic fluid handling technologies with advanced automation. The platform has been developed to increase space efficiency up to 30-fold, compared with conventional, manual techniques, alongside reductions in production costs and labour.
4x
Research led by the University of Bath has shown that surface-modified graphene could transform the production of hydrogen peroxide for industrial use as a bleaching agent or disinfectant. The new graphene-based process uses electrodes developed by Integrated Graphene, which include a microporous polymer to aid the catalytic surface process and can quadruple the rate of H2O2 production.
AMG Lithium, the German subsidiary of Dutch company AMG Critical Materials, is constructing a lithium hydroxide production plant in Bitterfeld, Germany. The plant will process recycled lithium salts retrieved from Finnish state-owned energy company Fortum’s new hydrometallurgical recycling plant in Harjavalta, Finland. Fortum’s plant recovers valuable metals from old electric vehicle lithium-ion batteries, while also recycling various waste fractions derived throughout the battery supply chain.
Swiss agricultural science and technology company Syngenta Crop Protection and US chemical manufacturer FMC have agreed to bring to market a technology to control grass weeds in rice in Asia. Tetflupyrolimet, the new active ingredient discovered and developed by FMC with support from Syngenta, marks the first major herbicide with a novel mode of action (DHODH – HRAC Group 28) in over three decades, offering help to farmers challenged by weed resistance to existing herbicides.
French specialty chemicals and advanced materials company Arkema has acquired Polytec, a German company specialising in adhesives for batteries and electronics applications.
Closed Loop Medicine, a UK techbio company developing combination prescription drug plus software therapy products that enable personalised dose optimisation, and UK specialty pharma Pharmanovia have entered a co-development partnership. The partnership will initially focus on the development and launch of a drug-plus-software combination version of a first-line anti-hypertensive in the UK, before phased global roll-out and additional therapies are added.
Hungarian oil and gas company MOL Group has purchased from German energy, agriculture and building materials company BayWa the Szarvas Biogas Plant, a waste processing plant that uses organic wastes to produce electricity and heat through cogeneration. The plant consumes over 12.5m m3 of biogas/year and has peak electric power capacity of around 4MW.
Finnish biofuels producer Neste has completed the expansion of its Singapore hydrotreated vegetable oil and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) refinery in Tuas, Singapore. The expansion raises the plant’s total production capacity to 2.6m t/year.
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed amendments to the regulations that govern the EPA’s review of new chemicals under the US Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to improve efficiency and align with the 2016 bipartisan TSCA amendments under the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. The proposal eliminates eligibility for exemptions from the full safety review process for new per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and other persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals.
Danish pharma Novo Nordisk and US biotech Life Edit Therapeutics, which is focused on gene-editing technologies and therapeutics (and part of US biotech ElevateBio), have announced an R&D collaboration to discover and develop gene-editing therapies against a set of therapeutic targets. Novo Nordisk will use Life Edit’s suite of gene-editing technologies to precisely edit the genome with the aim of developing therapies for rare genetic disorders as well as more prevalent cardiometabolic diseases.
UK speciality chemicals company Croda International and the UK Universities of Nottingham and York have announced a collaborative partnership to develop novel, sustainable biobased and biodegradable polymers for liquid polymer formulations. Used in items including crop protection and personal care products, these special polymers for liquids provide the key function of emulsification and stabilisation. The collaboration is funded through an ESPRC Prosperity Partnership.
Belgian specialty materials and chemicals company Solvay has opened an application development lab in Shanghai, China.
US genetic medicines company Scribe Therapeutics, which uses CRISPR to improve human health, has announced a strategic collaboration with US pharma Prevail Therapeutics, a wholly owned subsidiary of US pharma Eli Lilly, granting Prevail exclusive rights to Scribe’s CRISPR X-Editing (XE) technologies for the development of in vivo therapies directed to specified targets known to cause serious neurological and neuromuscular diseases.
US biopharma Gilead Sciences and US biotech Arcus Biosciences have expanded their research collaboration focused on oncology to include therapies for the treatment of inflammatory diseases.
Danish energy company Ørsted has broken ground on Europe’s largest e-methanol project, FlagshipONE, which aims to fuel a growing fleet of methanol-powered vessels. Currently, over 110 e-methanol vessels have been ordered or are in operation, up from 80 vessels at the end of 2022.
Ineos has produced what it claims is the first ultra-thin rigid film for recyclable flexible packaging products made from over 50% recycled plastic. The company uses its Recysl-IN hybrid resins and machine-direction orientation (MDO) technology to make the polyethylene film.
UK plastic recycler MBA Polymers has launched a new ABS (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) product, ABS 4125 UL. The UL-certified material provides a high-quality, lower-carbon recycled alternative to the plastics used in electronics, automotive manufacturing and consumer goods. The new material contains a 95%+ post-consumer recycled content and was developed at MBA’s facility in Worksop, Nottinghamshire.
German pharma and biotech Bayer and Bicycle Therapeutics, a UK biotech pioneering a new and differentiated class of therapeutics by using proprietary bicyclic peptides technology, have entered into a strategic collaboration agreement to discover, develop, manufacture and commercialise Bicycle radioconjugates for multiple oncology targets.
Watercycle Technologies, a UK company focused on developing sustainable, high-yield, low-cost, mineral extraction and water treatment systems, has for the first time successfully produced lithium carbonate from naturally occurring geothermal brines in Weardale, North East England. This represents a major step forward in the UK’s ambitions to produce a domestic supply of lithium. Commercial production of approximately 10,000t of lithium carbonate/year is being targeted, which has the potential to directly generate around 125 skilled jobs.
Speciality materials producer Solvay has launched a polyetheretherketone (PEEK) extrusion compound, KetaSpire KT-857, designed for the one-pass application of copper magnet insulation in high voltage electric motors.
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