Business Watch: Ineos opens Danish carbon storage site, and more

Big changes are in motion at BASF, the world’s largest chemical maker. The company has named the investment banks that will help manage the initial public offering of its agriculture business, which sells seeds and crop protection chemicals. The banks are blue chip—Citi, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan—and shouldn’t have a problem reaching BASF’s target of mid-2027.

In addition, BASF has rebranded its catalyst business as Metivo, a stand-alone firm that BASF will still own. BASF had considered divesting the business, which makes emissions catalysts for the automotive sector, but opted against it last year when it started performing well. BASF bought the business as part of its 2006 acquisition of Engelhard. The rise of electric vehicles since then has made some firms doubt the future of the internal combustion engine. But slower growth of EVs sales, as well as other emission applications, are making the business worthwhile—at least for now.

BASF’s spin-off isn’t the only one in the works for the agrochemical sector. Corteva Agriscience is planning to split itself in two later this year. New Corteva will focus on crop protection, and a firm to be named Vylor will sell seeds. This is a reversal of a strategy the ag chem sector held since the 1990s: combining seeds with crop protection chemicals in the hope of developing seeds that work with certain chemicals.

Questions? Comments? Tips? Send them to me, senior correspondent Alex Tullo, at [email protected].

Top stories from C&EN

Business in brief

Polyester recycler Loop Industries may put itself up for sale

The plastics recycling firm Loop Industries has formed a committee that will evaluate its strategic options, including a sale of the entire company or measures such as obtaining a strategic investor or merging with another firm. Loop is developing a technology to depolymerize polyethylene terephthalate (PET) into the raw materials dimethyl terephthalate and ethylene glycol. The company operates a demonstration facility in Terrebonne, Quebec, but has struggled to expand further. It planned a plant in Spartanburg, South Carolina, with the PET producer Indorama Ventures but put that project on the back burner in 2020. Loop is now pursuing a joint venture plant in India with Ester Industries that would make 70,000 metric tons per year of recycled PET.

—Alex Tullo

Cabot, US DOE switch $50 million battery grant from Michigan to Texas and Louisiana

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will give Cabot a $50 million grant for expansions at the firm’s battery materials manufacturing sites in Texas and Louisiana. Cabot says it will also spend $75 million of its own money on the projects, which will boost output of carbon nanotubes, carbon nanostructures, and other forms of conductive carbon. The funding isn’t new but is being redeployed from a similar expansion of battery materials capacity in Michigan that Cabot canceled earlier this year. The original DOE grant, issued in the Joe Biden administration, was intended to support a domestic supply chain for electric vehicle components. In a press release about the funding move, Cabot cites growing demand for energy storage related to artificial intelligence. The Texas and Louisiana projects are slated to come on line in 2028.

—Craig Bettenhausen

BASF eyes India plant for polyurethane chemical MDI

BASF is beginning to study the feasibility of building a plant in India that would make the polyurethane raw material methylene diphenyl diisocyanate (MDI). The company has already secured land in Dahej, Gujarat, for the project. The German chemical maker sees the plant as a next step as it completes a $1 billion MDI expansion in Geismar, Louisiana, that will double MDI capacity at that location to 600,000 metric tons per year. The company also has MDI plants in Belgium, China, and South Korea. In Dahej, BASF already operates an MDI splitter, which separates monomeric from polymeric MDI, and makes downstream polyurethane formulations.

—Alex Tullo

Ineos opens carbon storage site in Denmark

Ineos Energy, an arm of the chemical maker Ineos, has opened off the Danish coast what it calls the first full-scale carbon dioxide storage facility in the European Union. The facility will have initial capacity to store up to 400,000 metric tons (t) of CO₂ annually and could accept as many as 8 million t annually at full capacity, Ineos says. Captured CO₂ will be trucked to Port Esbjerg, Denmark, and loaded onto the vessel Carbon Destroyer 1 for shipment and injection into a depleted oil field around 250 km offshore in the Danish North Sea. The facility will first capture CO₂ created by Danish biomethane producers, but Ineos says it will be expanded to receive CO₂ from industries across Europe. A project called Northern Lights started storing CO₂ off the coast of Norway—which isn’t in the European Union—last year.

—Michael McCoy

Fujifilm plans electronic materials plant in India

Fujifilm says it will spend about $83 million to build an electronic materials plant in India’s Gujarat Province to supply a semiconductor fabrication facility that Tata Electronics is building. Fujifilm’s announcement doesn’t specify what materials its plant will manufacture, but the company notes that it supplies semiconductor makers with products including photoresists, chemical mechanical planarization slurries, thin-film materials, and photosensitive polyimides. Fujifilm says it will also provide Indian chemical makers with technology to make high-purity chemicals required for computer chip fabrication. Fujifilm and Sumitomo Chemical both indicated earlier that they want to supply the Tata chip plant.

—Michael McCoy

Sicona acquires silicon anode firm Advano

The Australian silicon anode developer Sicona Battery Technologies has acquired a New Orleans–based competitor, Advano. Silicon anodes can help lithium-ion batteries store more energy than they do when they incorporate conventional graphite materials. Sicona says it will install its own production process at Advano’s existing US facility and is planning a further $10.3 million expansion. The larger site will be able to produce enough material for 3 million battery cells. Sicona says it hopes to find customers in industries including robotics, power tools, data centers, and aircraft. Sicona also plans to establish a commercial-scale silicon anode production facility in Australia.

—Matt Blois

Quote of the week

Investors relaunching former Ascend Elements battery recycling plant

A group of investors has raised $15 million to relaunch the bankrupt battery materials firm Ascend Elements as a slimmed-down recycling venture called R3 Lithium. Ascend filed for bankruptcy in April. R3 Lithium’s team includes Linh Austin, the CEO who led Ascend immediately before the bankruptcy, and former Ascend chief technical officer and cofounder Eric Gratz. R3 purchased Ascend’s Georgia battery recycling facility for $3 million; Ascend’s unfinished facility in Kentucky was sold to other bidders. The Georgia facility can process used batteries into lithium carbonate, a raw material needed for lithium-ion batteries. Many other recyclers simply grind batteries into black mass, which needs additional processing to be turned into lithium chemicals. R3 plans to use its remaining funding to expand the plant’s lithium refining capacity. The new firm already has offtake agreements with former Ascend customers, including the commodities trader Trafigura.

—Matt Blois

Covestro opens elastomer recycling plant

Covestro has inaugurated a pilot plant at its site in Leverkusen, Germany, to advance a chemical recycling process for the high-end polyurethane elastomer Vulkollan. Unlike mechanical recycling methods, Covestro’s process breaks down elastomeric end-of-life material into its chemical building blocks to obtain monomers that can be reused. The firm says it achieves a material mass recovery rate of over 90%, which cuts the carbon footprint by up to two-thirds compared with fossil-based virgin materials. At the new facility, it will test various waste streams, optimize the recycling process, and gather data for industrial scale-up. Beyond Vulkollan—which is mainly a material for forklift wheels, railway buffer components, and automotive rebound stoppers—Covestro plans to use the plant to develop recycling technologies for other specialty cast elastomers and thermoplastic polyurethanes.

—Vanessa Zainzinger, special to C&EN

Hovione CEO exits to join CordenPharma

After 4 years as the CEO of the pharmaceutical services firm Hovione, Jean-Luc Herbeaux has joined CordenPharma in the same role, succeeding Michael Quirmbach. CordenPharma says Herbeaux’s appointment comes as CordenPharma enters a new stage of development after a period of significant expansion and investment. In August, Corden acquired the peptide contract development and manufacturing firm AmbioPharm. Herbeaux, a mechanical engineer by training, spent over 13 years at Evonik Industries before joining Hovione in 2020. Hovione turned to its own boardroom for Herbeaux’s replacement and chose Stefan Doboczky, the company’s chairman since 2024. Doboczky, a chemist who has spent over 3 decades in chemical firms, will take over as Hovione CEO on April 1, 2027.

—Aayushi Pratap

Chemify receives $29.7 million in government grants

Chemify, a Glasgow, Scotland–based start-up that combines artificial intelligence with robotics to make small molecules and materials, has received grants worth $21.6 million from Scottish Enterprise and $8.1 million from the UK government. The new funding will enable the firm to ramp up its automated AI synthesis platform, Chemify Genesis, at the facility the company calls Chemifarm. “The expansion will establish Chemify as the first Chemistry Hyperscaler and increase its capacity to deliver closed-loop chemistry to partners across pharmaceuticals, specialty chemicals and advanced materials,” the company says in a statement. With the grants, the company’s funding totals over $150 million.

—Aayushi Pratap

Novo partners with Orbis for cardiometabolic macrocycles

Novo Nordisk has joined forces with Orbis Medicines to develop oral macrocycle drugs for cardiometabolic diseases. Novo will pay Orbis up to $1.4 billion in up-front and milestone payments, along with royalties on any sales. Orbis’s ⁿGen platform leverages artificial intelligence to create synthetic macrocycles, cyclic peptides that last longer in the body and are more bioavailable than linear ones because they resist degradation. It generates large amounts of data that are used to further train the model. This partnership is one of the first moves Novo has made after a rebranding intended to help the company move ahead with more focus and speed.

—Sarah Braner

Novartis buys global rights to Sironax’s drug delivery platform

Novartis will buy the global rights to Sironax’s delivery program for brain drugs for $125 million up front. The platform is meant to cross the blood-brain barrier, which has historically posed problems for neurological drug efficacy. Sironax says it has possible applications for Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Huntington’s disease, as well as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Novartis has not bought many firms this year but has signed collaboration agreements and licensing deals, including with Synnovation Therapeutics in March and Antares Therapeutics in June.

—Sarah Braner

Lisata buys Marea, raises $225 million

Lisata Therapeutics has purchased Marea Therapeutics in a stock-for-stock transaction. Marea was launched in 2024 to develop a drug that targets angiopoietin-like 4; the drug candidate had been out-licensed by Novartis. It is a monoclonal antibody called MAR001 and it is currently in Phase 2 trials to treat atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Lisata has also raised a net $225 million series C round in private placement of convertible preferred stock. It will use the funding to put MAR001/005 and MAR002, a drug candidate for acromegaly, through clinical trials.

—Sarah Braner

What we’re reading