Business Watch: Regulators want Carlyle divestiture in BASF bid; Incyte to buy Vega Therapeutics

In an alarming development, Iran and Israel briefly broke their ceasefire and exchanged airstrikes on June 7 and 8, complicating negotiations between the Donald J. Trump administration and Iran’s government. One Israeli strike apparently hit Iran’s sprawling petrochemical complex at Mahshahr, a throwback to earlier stages of the war when chemical plants were in the crosshairs.

At the same time, there are more signs that petrochemical industry is learning to adjust to the supply disruption from the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. Formosa Petrochemical, apparently confident in its ability to secure feedstocks, has lifted force majeure at its complex in Taiwan, according to regional reports.

C&EN will continue to monitor the unfolding and increasingly nuanced fallout from the war.

Questions? Comments? Tips? Email C&EN senior correspondent Alex Tullo at [email protected].

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Business in brief

EC wants Carlyle to divest unit to clear BASF coatings purchase

The European Commission (EC) has approved Carlyle’s $6.7 billion acquisition of a 60% stake in BASF’s coatings division, but it is requiring another company that the private equity firm owns, Nouryon, to make a key divestiture. The EC is worried about Nouryon’s business in polysulfides, which are a raw material used in aerospace sealants. BASF is a producer of aerospace sealants, and the EC says that with common ownership, incentives would be in place for Nouryon to give the BASF business preferential treatment—including withholding sales of polysulfides to other customers. The commission wants Carlyle to find a suitable purchaser for this business. Such a sale would include Nouryon’s plant in Greiz, Germany.

—Alex Tullo

USA Rare Earth plans magnet plant in South Carolina

USA Rare Earth plans to build a rare earth magnet manufacturing facility in Blacksburg, South Carolina. The firm started production at its first magnet factory, in Oklahoma, in March. The South Carolina facility is expected to produce 6,400 metric tons of rare earth magnets per year and is slated to open in 2028. USA Rare Earth plans to mine and process rare earth ores and manufacture the magnets. It has been assembling those capabilities through acquisitions. Earlier this year, it acquired the rare earth metallization firm Less Common Metals and took a stake in the rare earth separation specialist Carester. Most recently, it has bid to acquire the rare earth mining company Serra Verde, which is exploiting an ionic adsorption clay deposit containing heavy rare earths in Brazil. Last month, rival MP Materials accused USA Rare Earth of stealing magnet manufacturing technology.

—Matt Blois

Sasol invests in German alumina product plant

The chemical maker Sasol is investing $69 million to expand its manufacturing site for alumina and related materials in Brunsbüttel, Germany. Alumina materials are used as catalyst supports and filtration media, and in other applications in chemical manufacturing and related industries. Sasol says the expansion will be in operation in 2029. The project includes energy efficiency upgrades that the firm says will reduce the carbon footprint of product lines at the plant by up to 15%. The news comes shortly after Sasol announced that it would restart a mothballed n-paraffin unit in Augusta, Italy.

—Craig Bettenhausen

Sintef to pilot CO₂-to-acetone process in Norway

The independent research organization Sintef is building a pilot facility for the fermentation of carbon dioxide into basic chemicals in Tiller, Norway. The project is slated to start up by year-end. It will begin by making acetone at a scale of 300 metric tons (t) per year, consuming 700 t of CO₂ along with hydrogen made with renewable electricity. “Through biotechnological processes, captured carbon can be converted into new products, and many industries are already leveraging biotechnology to move away from processes based on fossil carbon,” says Duncan Akporiaye, Sintef’s vice president for research. The project will rely on anion-exchange membrane electrolyzers, another emerging technology, provided by the US firm Power to Hydrogen.

—Craig Bettenhausen

Pilbara opens electric lithium-processing plant

Pilbara Minerals has started up a demonstration plant in Australia that will use electric calcination to convert lithium ore into the battery chemical lithium phosphate. In lithium processing, the calcination step uses heat to change lithium crystal structures into a form that will react better with sulfuric acid. It’s normally conducted in rotary kilns heated with fossil fuels, but the Pilbara plant will be able to heat the ore with electricity, using technology developed by Calix. The companies claim that this is the first example of an electric calcination process for lithium. Pilbara says the process will enable the company to extract more value from its ore and ship less material overseas for further processing. Once it is fully operational, the plant is expected to produce 3,000 metric tons of lithium phosphate per year.

—Matt Blois

Toray and PTTGC establish a biobased nylon 6,6 route

Japan’s Toray Industries and Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical have established a process that leads to 100% biobased nylon 6,6. It starts with the extraction of sugar from cassava pulp, a by-product of cassava starch production. The sugars are fermented into muconic acid, which can be converted chemically into adipic acid. Reacting this adipic with biobased hexamethylenediamine yields the biobased nylon 6,6. Toray aims to have its first sales of the material in 2028.

—Alex Tullo

Mitsui to expand eyeglass lens polymer plant

Mitsui Chemicals plans to build a new facility at its site in Omuta, Japan, to produce its MR brand polymer for eyeglass lenses. The firm says the high-refractive-index material, a sulfur-containing polyurethane, allows for thinner lenses than can be made with competing polycarbonate and acrylic resins. Mitsui calls MR “the de facto standard in high-refractive-index lens materials.” It expects growing demand for high-refractive-index ophthalmic lenses as the number of people with myopia increases.

—Michael McCoy

Orbital raises $50 million to use AI for new material discovery

Orbital Industries, a UK-based start-up that uses artificial intelligence to discover new materials, has raised $50 million in series B funding. The financing round was led by the venture capital firm Plural and includes former investors such as NVentures and Radical Ventures, among others. Orbital’s most advanced offering is a dielectric cooling fluid and refrigeration system designed to prevent graphics processing units (GPUs) from overheating. GPUs enable high-power computing and are central to AI. “Unlike existing alternatives, the fluid is free from PFAS, ‘forever chemicals’, allowing it to meet tightening regulatory standards across the US and Europe,” the company says in a press release. Orbital has entered a multiyear partnership with Amazon Web Services and is also working with other data center operators, the release says.

—Aayushi Pratap

Quote of the week

PharmaBlock opens peptide manufacturing plant in China

PharmaBlock Sciences, a Chinese drug services firm, says a pilot-scale peptide manufacturing plant at the company’s Zhejiang site is now operational. The plant has the capability to make peptides—from synthesis and cleavage to purification and lyophilization. The company says the new facility will help support clients’ early-stage development programs for peptides and their conjugates. It has a total reactor capacity of 600 L for solid-phase peptide synthesis. The facility has the option to integrate other synthesis techniques, such as liquid-phase and enzyme-assisted peptide synthesis, the firm says.

—Aayushi Pratap

Lilly selects Ascidian for $1.9 billion RNA exon-editing project

Eli Lilly and Company is tapping Ascidian Therapeutics’ RNA exon-editing technology to help develop new drugs for kidney diseases. Lilly will pay Ascidian up to $1.9 billion, including an undisclosed up-front payment, milestone payments, and royalties. The two firms do not disclose the nature of the kidney disease targets in a press release. Ascidian’s technology consists of gene editors that “rewrite” RNA multiple whole exons at a time. The company also has a $1.9 billion partnership in neurology with Roche.

—Rowan Walrath

Incyte spends $1.25 billion to buy blood disorder drugmaker Vega

As it approaches a patent cliff for its blockbuster drug, Jakafi, Incyte has agreed to buy Vega Therapeutics. Incyte is spending $1.25 billion up front on the purchase and could potentially pay another $750 million in milestones. At the center of the deal is a monoclonal antibody that decreased bleeding by 81% in an early-stage clinical trial for von Willebrand disease, according to data presented at the American Society for Hematology meeting in December. The antibody is now in Phase 3 studies. The drug candidate could also be used in bleeding disorders other than von Willebrand, according to Incyte.

—Rowan Walrath

Roche buys BTK degrader rights from Nurix

The pharma giant Roche has acquired the rights to develop and commercialize bexobrutideg, a Bruton’s tyrosine kinase (BTK) degrader candidate, from Nurix Therapeutics. Roche will pay Nurix $700 million up front, and Nurix is eligible for milestone payments that would make the deal worth up to $2.3 billion. Bexobrutideg is a small molecule being trialed as a possible treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia, but the firms are also planning Phase 2 trials for multiple sclerosis and chronic spontaneous urticaria.

—Sarah Braner

Ona Therapeutics raises $87 million to develop cancer drugs

Ona Therapeutics has raised about $87 million in a series B financing round. The funds will be used to bring Ona’s antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) candidates—ONA-255, for breast cancer, and ONA-389, for colorectal cancer—through clinical trials. The Barcelona, Spain–based firm raised about $34 million in series A financing in 2020 after spinning out from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine. The ADC field has seen a spate of deals lately, including Pfizer and Roche spending hundreds of millions of dollars each in partnerships with Innovent and Parabilis Medicines, respectively.

—Sarah Braner

Johnson & Johnson to buy Firefly Bio for $1 billion

Johnson & Johnson is hopping on the acquisition train and acquiring the oncology firm Firefly Bio for $1 billion in cash. Firefly’s degrader antibody conjugate platform links protein degraders and antibodies to fight KRas-driven tumors while avoiding noncancerous cells. KRas has been a difficult foe for oncologists, but progress in targeting the protein has accelerated in the past decade. US regulators approved the first KRas inhibitor, sotorasib, in 2021 as a treatment for non-small-cell lung cancer.

—Sarah Braner

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