New fronts are opening up in the Iran war. Borouge, the Abu Dhabi–based polyolefins company, plans to bypass the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. It signed an agreement with AD Ports to develop an alternative export hub on the east coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), outside the Persian Gulf on the Gulf of Oman. It also signed an accord with Gulftainer that gives it access to a terminal in Khor Fakkan Port, on the UAE’s east coast. And it is working with Etihad Rail on railroad links from its operations in Ruwais to the east.
One of Borouge’s parent companies, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, is working on an oil pipeline to Fujairah, the UAE’s main east coast port, though that won’t be finished until 2027.
Borouge has already had some success circumventing the blockade. In March, its first full month of production after the beginning of hostilities, the company managed to export 61% of its production volumes through alternate routes.
Iran is now trying to plug that leak in its control over the waterway. The Persian Gulf Strait Authority—an Iranian government body recently set up to regulate it and extract tolls on ships aiming to transit—plans to declare a zone of control that includes waters outside the including Fujairah.
Questions? Comments? Tips? Send them to me, C&EN senior correspondent Alex Tullo, at [email protected].
Top stories from C&EN
Freight trains loaded with coal at the Suifenhe Railway land port in Mudanjiang, China, on May 7, 2025. China and India have been pushing increased use of coal for their energy security. Credit:
Yuan Yong/VCG via AP
Business in brief
Syensqo looks to sell performance and care chemical unit
The specialty chemical maker Syensqo is exploring options to divest the unit that makes cleaning and personal care ingredients as well as a suite of industrial chemicals for mining, coatings, and agriculture applications. The operations generated around $380 million in pretax profits on $2.3 billion in sales in 2025, 35% of the firm’s total. Syensqo aims to focus on specialty materials and technologies for aerospace, defense, electronics, health care, energy, and transportation. Synesqo is the former specialty chemical business of Solvay, which split into two firms in 2023.
—Craig Bettenhausen
BASF restructures Ludwigshafen complex amid bid to cut group costs
BASF has begun a cost-cutting initiative, named CoreShift, to cut fixed costs in the company’s core businesses, service units, and corporate centers by 20% by 2029 from a 2024 baseline. BASF hasn’t disclosed how much money it hopes to save. The firm has four core business units—chemicals, materials, industrial solutions, and nutrition and care—which generate about $46.4 billion in annual sales. “Our efforts to deliver on this ambition are already in full swing, including restructuring our largest Verbund site in Ludwigshafen and reshaping our global service units,” Julia Raquet, president of the newly formed Core Transformation Office at BASF, says in a press release. As part of CoreShift, BASF plans to simplify its operations and organization, globally harmonize business processes, standardize information technology, and increase its use of artificial intelligence. The cost-cutting program follows an initiative unveiled in 2024 to restructure BASF by carving out a number of business units into stand-alone companies.
—Alex Scott
UK government allots $470 million for chemical sector
The UK government has created the Critical Chemicals Resilience Fund with £350 million ($470 million) in funding to support the country’s chemical industry. The fund will primarily support companies supplying chemicals to essential sectors, including energy, food, health care and water. The money will be used to support sites, strengthen critical supply chains, and help protect thousands of skilled jobs, the government says in a press release. Steve Elliott, CEO of UK’s largest chemical industry organization, the Chemical Industries Association, describes the fund as “a very welcome first step” to protect UK chemical production, which in recent years has been hit by high costs and cheap imports. “Much is needed—both in terms of policy and funding support—to address the industry’s energy, carbon reduction and broader regulatory costs,” Elliott says.
—Alex Scott
BASF to sell silicates business to PQ
BASF has agreed to sell its silicates business, including a plant in Düsseldorf, Germany, to PQ for an undisclosed sum. BASF says the planned sale follows a strategic reassessment of its Care Chemicals division. PQ, formerly Philadelphia Quartz, has been manufacturing silicates since 1861. The company adopted its current form in 2021, when Cerberus Capital Management and the industrial conglomerate Koch Industries took the silicates business private in a $1.1 billion transaction. Today PQ operates 30 plants around the world and has annual sales of about $800 million.
—Michael McCoy
Nuclear reactor at Dow plant clears regulatory hurdle
The nuclear technology company X-energy and Dow got a favorable environmental impact assessment for their plan to power Dow’s Seadrift, Texas, plant with a set of four small modular nuclear reactors. On May 18, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave a finding of no significant impact; that moves the project forward under a streamlined regulatory process the agency rolled out recently in response to an executive order from President Donald J. Trump. In a press release, the agency says it expects to complete the safety review for construction of the plant later this year, which would be followed by a construction permit. Starting up and operating the reactors requires a separate licensing process. If all goes well from here, the reactors will be installed by 2030 to replace the gas-fired boiler that powers Dow’s plant, thus eliminating 440,000 metric tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions.
—Craig Bettenhausen
Topsoe backs off plans for solid-oxide hydrogen electrolysis
Topsoe CEO Roeland Baan shows a demonstration solid oxide electrolysis cell stack to Dorte West, mayor of Herning, Denmark. Credit:
Topsoe
The chemical engineering firm Topsoe is decelerating its deployment of solid-oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs) for hydrogen production. Just 6 months after cutting the ribbon on a gigawatt-scale production plant for the cells in Herning, Denmark, Topsoe says that “the factory will be hibernated until demand is robust.” The firm is also cancelinging plans for a sister plant in Chesterfield, Virginia—meaning that Topsoe will have no commercial-scale production capacity for SOECs. In addition, it says it will lay off 440 workers in its Power-to-X business, which sells equipment to make chemicals and fuels from carbon dioxide and electrolytic hydrogen. Topsoe says it plans to retain ownership of the Herning plant and reactivate it when the market for low-carbon hydrogen improves. In the meantime, Topsoe tells C&EN, it will continue to prove out the viability of the platform through partnerships and smaller-scale demonstration projects. Topsoe’s flagship SOEC customer, First Ammonia, says that it will select a different hydrogen production technology for the 200 MW green ammonia plant it is developing for Victoria, Texas, and that it still expects to begin construction later this year.
—Craig Bettenhausen
ChainCraft plans to convert potatoes into chemicals
The start-up ChainCraft plans to demonstrate a technology that converts potato by-products into medium-chain fatty acids. The company will retrofit part of a potato processing plant in the Netherlands and aims to produce 20,000 metric tons of acids annually. Medium-chain fatty acids are used to produce alcohols, plasticizers, buffer agents, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and other chemicals. They are typically made from fossil fuels or palm oil. ChainCraft says its process should cut the carbon footprint of making these chemicals by 50–80%.
—Matt Blois
Avian raises capital to build cameras for plant fire safety
Avian has developed a system for detecting fires in manufacturing settings. Credit:
Avian
Avian, a Swiss artificial intelligence company focused on fire safety, has raised $2.6 million in preseed funding to expand its thermal monitoring technology. The financing round was led by the venture capital firm Founderful. Avian says the new funds will go toward expanding “beyond wood products into recycling, chemical processing, oil and gas, and maritime.” The start-up offers cameras that can monitor assets to detect abnormal heat and send out an alert before a fire starts. Avian says its systems, deployed in approximately 50 sites across 9 countries, have prevented over $50 million in damage from fires and equipment failures.
—Aayushi Pratap
Quote of the week
“It is deeply concerning that, just when Europe should be accelerating the transition to a circular economy, we see a dramatic slowdown.”
Lilly’s new weight-loss molecule may top Zepbound
Eli Lilly and Company has already generated billions of dollars in revenue from the sales of its popular weight-loss drug Zepbound, which mimics a hormone called glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1). Now the company says a new molecule, called retatrutide, which targets three hormonal receptors—GLP-1, glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP), and glucagon—leads to even greater weight loss than Zepbound. In Phase 3 clinical trials, participants on the highest dose of retatrutide, 12 mg, lost an average of 28.3% of their body weight over 80 weeks. Meanwhile, participants on lower doses of 4 mg and 9 mg lost an average of 19% and 26% of their body weight, respectively. But biotech analysts at the investment firm William Blair were quick to note that adverse events led to high discontinuation rates among patients who received the 12 mg dose. “For the majority of patients living with obesity, we believe that Zepbound will continue to serve as the go-to medication, due to its balanced efficacy and tolerability profile,” they write in a note to investors.
—Aayushi Pratap
Takeda hit with $885 million bill in antitrust suit
A federal jury in Boston has ordered Takeda Pharmaceutical to pay $885 million in damages for conspiring to delay the release of a generic competitor to its constipation drug Amitiza. The company could ultimately pay three times that amount, or about $2.5 billion, under US antitrust law. Takeda says it will appeal the decision. The suit is a class action lawsuit that pharmacies, health funds, insurers, and retailers filed in 2021 claiming that because Takeda had forced the delay of the generic, the plaintiffs had overpaid for Amitiza.
—Rowan Walrath
InMed and Mentari merge for migraine medicines
InMed Pharmaceuticals and Mentari Therapeutics are merging into one company, which will operate as Mentari Therapeutics. A private funding round raised $290 million—a sum expected to sustain the new firm through 2028. The merger will include Mentari’s migraine drug candidates MT-001, an antibody that targets pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP), and MT-002, a bispecific antibody that targets PACAP and calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP).
—Sarah Braner
