Business Watch: Braskem gets a new majority owner; Lilly buying Ajax for $2.3 billion

Dow’s recent earnings presentation was another piece of the puzzle for understanding the fallout for the war in Iran. The company confirmed a couple of the trends that we have been hearing about since the war began: production outages in the Middle East and reduced production of petrochemicals in Asia due to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.

What is new is the color around the war’s impact in the Americas. Most of Dow’s ethylene and polyethylene is produced at low-cost facilities in the US, Canada, and Argentina that are unaffected by the conflict. These plants will be able to sell into an international market offering high prices owing to shortages in other regions. As a result, Dow expects pretax profits to more than double in the second quarter versus the first.

C&EN will be watching upcoming earnings announcements. BASF’s later this week should give more insight about the situation in Europe. LyondellBasell Industries is also likely to discuss a boom from its US assets.

Send any questions, comments, or tips to me, senior correspondent Alex Tullo, at [email protected]

Top stories from C&EN

• Industry seeks predictability as Congress considers updates to the US Toxic Substances Control Act.
• The chemical industry needs more policy incentives for it to become more sustainable, according to a new report.
• Dow expects an earnings surge, especially in the Americas, due to short supplies and high prices stemming from the Iran war.
• USA Rare Earth will buy a Brazilian mine to secure supply of heavy rare earths outside of Asia.

Business in brief

Braskem majority stake will go to private equity firm IG4

Braskem’s majority shareholder, the Brazilian conglomerate Novonor, has reached an agreement with affiliates of IG4 Capital for the sale of its stake. In the deal IG4 will get Novonor’s equity stake, representing about 50.1% of Braskem’s common shares and 34.3% of its total share capital. IG4 will give up its holdings of Novonor’s debt. According to published reports, the deal values the stake at about $3.7 billion. Novonor, which has been trying to sell its holdings in Brazil’s largest chemical maker for years, has entertained many offers, including from Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Braskem generated $12.7 billion in sales in 2025. The Brazilian state oil company, Petrobras, which controls 47.0% of Braskem, has approved the sale. Novonor will retain a 4% stake in Braskem.

—Alex Tullo

Dangote plans detergent ingredient plant in Nigeria

Dangote Petroleum Refinery plans to move deeper into the chemical business by building a facility at its refinery outside Lagos, Nigeria, to make the surfactant raw material linear alkylbenzene (LAB). Using technology from Honeywell’s UOP business, Dangote will build an LAB plant that, at a capacity of 400,000 metric tons (t) per year, will be one of the largest such facilities in the world, Honeywell says. The Dangote refinery opened in September 2004 and is in the midst of an expansion project that will make it the largest refinery in the world. Dangote already produces polypropylene using Honeywell technology and is in the process of tripling output of the polymer to 2.4 million t per year.

—Michael McCoy

Stone laid for Mexican low-carbon methanol project

US and Mexican officials were on hand for a ceremonial stone-laying ceremony for Pacifico Mexinol, a low-carbon methanol project planned for Topolobampo, Mexico. Construction is set to begin later this year on the $3.3 billion project, which is backed by the World Bank member International Finance Corp., and be completed by 2030. It will have the capacity to produce 1.8 million metric tons (t) per year of blue methanol, made using natural gas but with carbon capture and storage. It will also have annual capacity for 350,000 t of ultra-low carbon methanol, made from recycled carbon and hydrogen from renewable sources. Pacifico Mexinol has an agreement to supply the ultra-low carbon methanol to Mitsubishi Gas Chemical. Attending the ceremony were Ron Johnson, US ambassador to Mexico; Vidal Llerenas, the undersecretary of trade and industry in Mexico’s ministry of economy; and Laila Porras, the director general of international affairs for the Mexican ministry of energy.

—Alex Tullo

Air Liquide, Air Products invest in US air separation units

Air Liquide will supply oxygen, nitrogen, and argon to a green steel plant in southern Louisiana under a long-term contract the industrial gas firm has signed with Hyundai-Posco. Air Liquide plans to invest more than $350 million to support the deal, primarily in a new air separation unit to be located at the Koch Methanol site nearby. Hyundai-Posco is a joint venture that is building a $5.8 billion electric arc furnace to make steel for Hyundai and Kia automobile production lines in the US. The firms expect the plants to come on line in 2028. Separately, Air Products and Chemicals is adding a new air separation unit in Cocoa, Florida. This facility will supply oxygen, nitrogen, and argon in liquid form to space launch customers in the area. The firm says it will also offer some of the plant’s output to the local chemical, metalworking, and medical manufacturing industries.

—Craig Bettenhausen

Asahi Kasei delays battery separator plant

Asahi Kasei is delaying the start of a battery separator plant it’s building in Ontario, Canada, by 1.5–2 years because of electric cars’ slow sales growth in North America. The firm expects the plant to open in 2027 and reach full production by 2030. Asahi Kasei announced plans to invest more than $1.1 billion in the separator plan in April 2024 and claimed that it would use new technology to increase productivity. For now, the company says it will supply North American customers from facilities in Japan and South Korea. Though electric car sales are sluggish, the firm noted that the use of lithium-ion batteries for stationary storage is growing faster than expected and presenting a new opportunity for battery component makers.

—Matt Blois

Quote of the week

Evonik to invest $94 million in drug ingredient fermentation in Slovakia

The specialty chemical maker Evonik Industries is adding to its fermentation complex in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia, with a $94 million investment in downstream processing for pharmaceutical ingredients. The project, already underway, will add about 50 new jobs to the site. Evonik makes a range of proteins, biopolymers, and small molecules at Banská Bystrica in a set of 23 fermenters, each with a capacity of 50 m³. The investment will greatly increase the plant’s capacity to extract target substances from the fermentation broth at purity levels suitable for use in drugs. In 2022, the firm made a similar investment in specialized downstream processing at the site for rhamnolipids, a new type of surfactant being adopted in home and personal care.

—Craig Bettenhausen

AbbVie plans $1.4 billion North Carolina manufacturing campus

AbbVie is the latest Big Pharma company to roll out a major US expansion after tariff threats by President Donald J. Trump. The company has announced a $1.4 billion investment to build a manufacturing campus in North Carolina for sterile injectable drugs. The 750,000 m² site will integrate artificial intelligence into advanced manufacturing capabilities to support the company’s range of immunology, neuroscience, and oncology medicines. “This project is part of the Company’s $100 billion commitment to U.S. R&D and capital investments, including manufacturing, over the next decade,” AbbVie says in the announcement. Construction is set to begin this year and conclude in 2028.  The company expects to hire 734 people at the site, including engineers, scientists, manufacturing operators, and laboratory technicians.

—Aayushi Pratap

Everstone Capital invests in Indian API maker Apothecon

The private equity firm Everstone Capital says it is investing close to $270 million to obtain a “substantial stake” in the Indian pharmaceutical chemical maker Apothecon and its US sister company, Navinta. Two former Sandoz executives, Mahendra Patel and Joe Renner, founded Apothecon in 2003. Today it has about 800 employees, engaged mostly in active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production and finished-drug formulation. Apothecon entered the bulk peptide business last fall, when it opened a facility in Sayakha, India. Navinta markets generic drugs in the US.

—Michael McCoy

Lilly to buy blood cancer drugmaker Ajax Therapeutics

Eli Lilly and Company has signed an agreement to purchase Ajax Therapeutics in a deal that could be worth up to $2.3 billion. Ajax’s lead product is a type II JAK2 inhibitor that aims to treat myeloproliferative neoplasms, a group of chronic blood cancers that include myelofibrosis and polycythemia vera. While type I JAK2 inhibitors can be effective at treating these conditions, patients can develop resistance to the drugs. Ajax’s lead product, AJ1-11095, is currently in Phase 1 clinical trials for treating myelofibrosis in people who have already been treated with a type I JAK2 inhibitor. Lilly was a founding investor in Ajax.

—Max Barnhart

Regeneron’s gene therapy for hearing loss gets FDA approval

Otarmeni, a gene therapy drug from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration after an accelerated review under the agency’s new national priority voucher program. The drug is approved for people with hearing loss due to a variant of the OTOF gene that produces a nonfunctional version of the otoferlin protein, which would otherwise help transmit signals from the inner ear to the brain. Otarmeni uses an adeno-associated virus to deliver a functional copy of the OTOF gene directly to cells in the inner ear through a one-time surgical procedure. Regeneron says that in its clinical trial, 80% of patients had improved hearing after 24 weeks and that 42% of patients were able to hear whispers after 48 weeks. In a surprise move, the company announced that it will provide the treatment for free to people in the US. In an interview with CNBC, Regeneron CEO Leonard Schleifer said that pricing elsewhere has not yet been determined.

—Max Barnhart

Fathom Therapeutics raises $47 million for AI drug discovery

Fathom Therapeutics has launched with $47 million in series A funding to marry the best of molecular dynamics simulations and generative artificial intelligence for small-molecule drug discovery. The firm is using a platform called Microcosmos, which it says can use AI to accelerate protein dynamics modeling by a factor of 10,000. In a news release, Fathom CEO Huafeng Xu describes Microcosmos as “translating accurate quantum mechanical calculations to measurable cellular outcomes.” Xu cofounded Fathom with Jesus Izaguirre and Yujie Wu. All three previously worked at Roivant Sciences and have experience using computational chemistry and supercomputing for drug discovery. Fathom is not disclosing any drug targets or modalities beyond that it will focus on small-molecule drug candidates for high-impact diseases.

—Laura Howes

FDA says ChemoCentryx, now owned by Amgen, manipulated data

The US Food and Drug Administration is claiming that ChemoCentryx, makers of the vasculitis drug Tavneos, manipulated data during a Phase 3 clinical trial to get the drug approved. These claims are made in a letter from the FDA to leaders at Amgen (PDF), which purchased ChemoCentryx in 2022 for $3.7 billion. Tavneos has been under scrutiny for side effects that include serious and sometimes fatal liver injuries. This led to an FDA request in February that Amgen remove Tavneos from the market. But the fraud allegations are new. In its letter to Amgen, the FDA cites a report filed May 29, 2025 in securities litigation against ChemoCentryx that had been ongoing since 2021 and concluded in August of last year in favor of ChemoCentryx. The agency says the report suggests ChemoCentryx researchers initially found that Tavneos wasn’t significantly different than a placebo in treating vasculitis. Those researchers then unblinded and readjudicated patient outcomes to ensure that Tavneos was shown to be significantly effective. The FDA also gave Amgen and ChemoCentryx notice that it intends to withdraw approval for Tavneos; in standard protocol, the agency is offering an opportunity for a hearing to dispute this decision.

—Max Barnhart

What we’re reading

• The war in Iran is driving up prices for virgin plastics and new interest in recycled materials: Packaging Insights
• European titanium dioxide buyers fear that the Chinese purchaser of a UK pigment plant will have an unfair advantage: The Financial Times
• The emerging issue of microplastics from resins poses a challenge to paint makers: Natrium Capital