Business Watch: European pyrolysis plants get new owners, and more

A trip to Indianapolis last week reminded me to keep an open mind about what a chemical company is and what industrial chemists do.

I was in the city to attend the Chemical Innovation Exchange, an annual gathering of chemistry-oriented innovation and research and development executives. The venue was The Center, a meeting space operated by the Heritage Group, a family-owned collection of companies across industries as varied as asphalt, chemical manufacturing, and recycling.

On paper, the firm’s businesses are prosaic, even basic. But those of us who took a lunch-break tour of Heritage’s labs were surprised to see a sophisticated setup that houses dozens of employees and modern equipment for chemical evaluation and synthesis. It turns out that you need chemists to test asphalt, develop waste recycling processes, and recover lithium from end-of-life batteries.

Heritage operates Monument Chemical, a maker of polyols, surfactants, glycols, and other products. On the tour, I learned that chemicals and chemistry are also part of almost everything else the parent company does. And I suspect that, on closer inspection, many firms in the industrial world would prove to be similarly chemistry intensive.

Questions? Comments? Tips? Send them to me, business editor Michael McCoy, at [email protected].

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• After a fatal accident involving hydrofluoric acid, the city of Sapporo, Japan, has cited Hokkaido University with violations of the nation’s poisonous substances control act.

Business in brief

Pryme and Plastic Energy plastics pyrolysis plants get new owners

Two troubled European plastics recycling companies, Pryme and Plastic Energy, have agreed to divest relatively new pyrolysis plants. The private equity firm EMV Capital will purchase Pryme’s plant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Pryme started up the pyrolysis facility in 2023 at a cost of more than $50 million but decided to shut it down earlier this year, citing “recurring technical issues.” The site has the capacity to turn 26,000 metric tons (t) of waste plastic per year into pyrolysis oil that can be used to make new plastics, but it managed to process only 1,023 t in 2025. EMV plans to invest $8 million to retrofit the unit with a new reactor developed by the EMV-controlled firm DeepTech Recycling and restart it in about 18 months. Meanwhile, Plastic Energy has transferred its stake in a joint venture pyrolysis plant to its partner, the energy giant TotalEnergies. The plant started up earlier this year with 15,000 t of annual capacity at TotalEnergies’ Grandpuits complex, outside Paris. Plastic Energy went into and emerged from insolvency earlier this year and says it will now focus on its two plants in Spain.

—Alex Tullo

3 chemical plants to close in Germany

The specialty chemical maker Evonik Industries says it will close two smaller sites in Germany by next year. One of the plants, in Hamburg, employs around 50 people making products for the cosmetic and personal care industries. The other, in Bitterfeld, employs 40 in the production of chlorosilanes. Evonik says it will continue to supply the products made at the two sites from larger facilities in Germany. “Our structures when it comes to production, administration, and laboratories are too fragmented in some areas,” Claus Rettig, Evonik’s interim chairman, says in a press release. Separately, Leuna-Polyamid, which makes the nylon 6 intermediate caprolactam and other basic chemicals in Leuna, Germany, is on the verge of shutting down, according to a published report. Two local firms acquired the Leuna site on April 1 after its previous owner, Domo Chemicals, filed for insolvency. But the new owners were unable to attract new investors to keep the operation running, the report says. The facility employs about 400 people.

—Michael McCoy

Lanxess and Kemira invest in battery materials

The chemical firms Lanxess and Kemira are making investments to carve out a bigger space for themselves in the battery materials business. Both firms hope to develop materials for lithium iron phosphate (LFP) batteries, the type typically used in the fast-growing stationary storage market. Lanxess says it will establish a battery laboratory in Germany to test the performance of LFP precursors, such as iron oxide and iron phosphate. Lanxess began producing battery-grade iron oxide in 2024. Many companies in China use iron sulfate instead of iron oxide to make LFP. Meanwhile, Kemira has started piloting a production process for iron phosphate in Sweden. The firm says its expertise in making iron salts such as iron chloride and iron sulfate for water treatment will help it scale up iron phosphate production.

—Matt Blois

Sasol to sell nitrate business to explosives maker Enaex

Sasol has agreed to sell its nitrate business to the explosive maker Enaex Africa, a major customer. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Sasol will retain a 23% interest in the business, which makes nitric acid, ammonium nitrate, and limestone ammonium nitrates. It also produces ammonia at Sasol’s major facilities in Secunda and Sasolburg, South Africa. The business had $182 million in sales during Sasol most recent fiscal year, about 2% of the company’s total chemical sales.

—Alex Tullo

Quote of the week

Advancion’s financial troubles prompt credit downgrade

The debt rating firm Fitch Ratings has downgraded the credit rating of Advancion to “C” after the specialty chemical maker announced an exchange offering and capital raise that Fitch views as a distressed debt exchange—a transaction undertaken to avoid bankruptcy. Advancion, which is owned by the private equity firms Ardian and Golden Gate Capital, makes buffers for the life sciences market as well as nitroalkane ingredients for coatings, personal care, construction materials, and other markets. Fitch says the Illinois-based firm is the only company in the world that practices propane nitration commercially. The financial trouble is the latest pothole in a rough patch for small specialty chemical makers, especially those owned by private equity. For example, SK Capital nearly shut down the phosgene maker VanDeMark Chemical in May before the industrial investor and operator Valiant Energy Management swooped in and bought the business.

—Craig Bettenhausen

Solvay considers partnership for rare earths business

Solvay says it is considering putting its rare earths business into a partnership with the investment firm One Investment Management. Solvay and its predecessor companies started processing rare earths in La Rochelle, France, in 1948. Solvay was once a world leader in the field but was eclipsed by Chinese firms toward the end of the 20th century. More recently it has been trying to rebuild its rare earth processing capabilities and in 2025 inaugurated a new processing line in France. Solvay has agreements to source recycled magnets and rare earth ores as feedstock and has lined up customers to turn the materials into magnets.

—Matt Blois

US government takes a stake in a tungsten producer

The US Department of Defense is making a $450 million equity investment in Elmet Group to shore up the country’s access to tungsten, which is used to make superhard materials for cutting tools and industrial machinery. The metal’s high melting point and hardness also make it useful for producing weapons. China is the leading miner of tungsten concentrate; the metal hasn’t been mined in the US for more than a decade. In 2025, the price of tungsten concentrate soared because of US tariffs and Chinese export controls. Elmet plans to use the government funds to reopen a tungsten mine in Nevada and invest $165 million in tungsten processing facilities in Maine, Michigan, and Ohio. In addition to the equity investment, Elmet inked a deal with the US government to sell up to $2 billion of tungsten products to replenish the country’s stockpile.

—Matt Blois

US court invalidates Kaneka’s coenzyme Q10 patent

The US District Court for the Eastern District of New York has ruled in favor of Cocrystal Technology in a long-running patent dispute with Kaneka over coenzyme Q10, a dietary supplement also known as ubiquinol. Kaneka sued Cocrystal in October 2023 claiming that the Chinese firm infringed Kaneka’s US Patent No. 7,829,080, which describes a method of stabilizing ubiquinol so it doesn’t oxidize and lose effectiveness. In an order issued Sept. 2, the court found that Kaneka failed to meet the utility and enablement requirements of US patent law. Cocrystal says in a press release that the end of the dispute “removes a significant source of uncertainty” for the US nutraceutical industry. Kaneka says it strongly disagrees with the court’s decision and intends to appeal.

—Michael McCoy

Drug services firms expand manufacturing capacity

Drug services companies are ramping up manufacturing capacity in the US, Europe, and the UK. Lonza has announced plans to build a new spray-drying facility at its Bend, Oregon, site, because of strong demand from US clients. Companies often deploy spray-drying to increase the bioavailability of drugs with poor solubility. “Today, a significant share of molecules in the clinical pipeline requires bioavailability enhancement,” Lonza says in a press release. The new facility is expected to be ready by 2029 and will create 80 new jobs. Meanwhile, the generic-drug maker Sandoz says it will build a biosimilar drug substance facility in Ljubljana, Slovenia, at a cost of $300 million. And Onyx, a contract development and manufacturing organization, will spend nearly $2 million to increase manufacturing capacity for small-molecule drug substances at its facility in Sunderland, England. The expansion will support early-stage drug development programs, Onyx says.

—Aayushi Pratap

Novo Nordisk is now Novo and will keep the bull

The pharma giant Novo Nordisk has dropped Nordisk and is now going simply by Novo. Novo Nordisk remains the company’s legal name—and its Apis bull logo isn’t going anywhere, either. Novo says in a press release that the rebrand is meant to make the company “more memorable and relevant.” The change comes as Novo struggles to keep up with Eli Lilly and Company in the age of glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) agonist drugs. A possible own-goal came in February, when Novo compared its CagriSema semaglutide and cagrilintide injection against Lilly’s tirzepatide for weight loss and found that the latter is more effective.

—Sarah Braner

RA Capital launches Solstice Oncology with $225 million

The venture firm RA Capital Management has unveiled the latest firm to emerge from its Raven incubator: Solstice Oncology, which is developing an antibody called porustobart to treat colon cancers in which the cancer cells’ DNA is stable. In February, Solstice closed a $225 million series A financing led by RA Capital. It’s currently running a midstage clinical trial assessing porustobart in combination with Merck & Co.’s immunotherapy Keytruda. “You get this double immune system juice,” Solstice CEO Caroline Loew tells C&EN in an interview. The company is expecting data in the second half of next year.

—Rowan Walrath

Schrödinger spin-off Tectora raises $55 million

Schrödinger, known for providing physics-based computational tools for molecular design, has announced a new spin-off biotechnology firm called Tectora. The start-up, which will focus on immunology and inflammation therapies, has raised $55 million in series A financing from New Enterprise Associates and RA Capital Management. The two investors are also cofounders of Tectora, according to a Schrödinger press release. Schrödinger contributed two early-stage small-molecule programs to Tectora in exchange for an equity stake in the start-up and future milestone payments. Schrödinger is a seasoned player in spinning off biotechnology firms, including Nimbus Therapeutics, Morphic Therapeutic, Structure Therapeutics, and Ajax Therapeutics.

—Aayushi Pratap

Sernova, Seraxis merge to form type 1 diabetes drugmaker

Sernova Biotherapeutics is slated to merge with Seraxis Holdings and rebrand as BetaNova BioTherapeutics. Once the merger closes, BetaNova will be responsible for developing SR-02, a stem cell–derived pancreatic islet therapy for type 1 diabetes. SR-02 is designed to be paired with immunosuppressants. The companies plan to launch an early clinical trial of the drug candidate at the beginning of next year and start trials of a second drug candidate a few months later. That therapy, SR-03, also involves stem cell–derived pancreatic islets but uses gene editing, so patients won’t have to take immunosuppressants.

—Rowan Walrath

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