No chemical company CEO was among the 15 or so executives who accompanied Donald J. Trump on his recent trip to China. And that’s probably a good sign, as it can be taken to mean the US chemical industry doesn’t have any special gripes involving trade with China.
That makes sense. As C&EN has reported, most chemicals are exempt from the fluctuating tariffs the Trump administration has imposed on China over the past 15 months. Moreover, the US and China have a healthy trade in chemical products that is almost even. As my colleague Alex Tullo reported last year, the US exported about $14.7 billion worth of chemical products to China in 2024 and imported about $13.8 billion worth. China is the third-largest export destination for US chemicals, after Canada and Mexico, and the second-largest import source, after Canada.
The relationship between the US and China has many areas of friction, but chemical trade does not seem to be one of them.
Questions? Comments? Tips? Send them to me, C&EN business editor Michael McCoy, at [email protected].
Top stories from C&EN
A tanker at a terminal in Japan’s Port of Tokuyama on April 10. The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has made it hard for Japanese chemical companies to import the raw materials they need. Credit:
Associated Press
Business in brief
Trinseo files for bankruptcy, will be owned by creditors
After years of tailspin, the styrenic polymer company Trinseo has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The firm has reached an agreement with lenders that will wipe away $2 billion in debt, thereby reducing interest payments by $140 million annually. In exchange, Trinseo’s creditors will get all its equity. The petrochemical industry downturn, particularly in aromatic molecules, has not been kind to Trinseo, which lost $546 million on about $3 billion in sales in 2025. The company has closed styrene plants in Germany and the Netherlands and a polycarbonate plant in Germany. It tried diversifying in 2021, laying out nearly $2 billion for Arkema’s polymethyl methacrylate business and the acrylic sheet maker Aristech Surfaces. And Trinseo has been seeking to sell its half of the Americas Styrenics joint venture with Chevron Phillips Chemical since 2024.
─Alex Tullo
Lithium Americas project is hit by tariffs and supply disruptions
Lithium Americas has already installed these bicarbonate reactors for lithium carbonate crystallization at its facility in Thacker Pass, Nevada. Credit:
Lithium Americas
The mining firm Lithium Americas says tariffs will add $80 million–$120 million to the cost of building its lithium mine and chemical facility in Nevada. The company says it’s working toward completion of the project in 2027, but impediments including tariffs and the Iran war are adding costs. For example, Lithium Americas buys structural steel from the United Arab Emirates, and suppliers had to reroute the material through Saudi Arabia for shipment from the Red Sea. The company says it is generating a new estimate of the project’s multibillion-dollar cost to account for tariffs, increased fuel prices, and impacts from the war.
─Matt Blois
Water company to reopen shuttered plastics recycling plant
The bottled water firm Niagara Bottling has come to the rescue of a California plastics recycling plant that closed last year. The plant, formerly owned by rPlanet Earth, can produce 20,000 metric tons per year of recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET), about 4% of US capacity. When the facility shut down last September, recycling experts worried that imports of virgin and rPET were putting US recycling facilities out of business. The Association of Plastic Recyclers, a trade group, said the US industry was saddled by “brands pulling away from recycled content commitments to instead buy more new virgin plastic, and by brands choosing to buy imported rPET to meet their U.S. recycled content requirements instead of buying from US recyclers like rPlanet.” Niagara says it will restart the plant and use the recycled resin in its own water bottles. “We’re proud to bring this facility back to life and become one of the few companies in the country with a true bottle-to-bottle process,” Niagara Bottling president Rali Sanderson says in a statement.
─Alex Tullo
Owners inject cash into financially strapped Arxada
The specialty chemical maker Arxada has agreed to a recapitalization under which it will receive about $250 million from its private equity owners, Bain Capital and Cinven, to improve its liquidity. “We look forward to working with our stakeholders to implement the transaction, which will provide us with additional runway into 2031–2032 and reinforce liquidity,” Peter Frauenknecht, the firm’s chief financial officer, says in a press release. The debt rating firm Moody’s Ratings says it considers the payment a “distressed exchange”—a transaction undertaken to avoid bankruptcy. Although the new cash will strengthen Arxada’s liquidity, the firm will continue to have a very high debt load, Moody’s says. Arxada is Lonza’s former specialty chemical business, which Bain and Cinven acquired in 2022 for $4.7 billion. Separately, Fitch Ratings sees the potential for a distressed exchange at another specialty chemical firm, Advancion Sciences, which is owned by the investment firms Ardian and Golden Gate Capital. In an analysis, Fitch says Advancion’s liquidity position of $46 million is “sufficient only to postpone, but not avoid, a liquidity crisis.”
─Michael McCoy
Mitsubishi kills Thai biodegradable plastics venture
Mitsubishi Chemical is withdrawing from the joint venture it formed in 2017 with PTT Global Chemical to make polybutylene succinate (PBS), a biodegradable polymer. PBS is used in coatings for food packaging and servingware designed to break down by microbial action after use. The polymer is derived from succinic acid, a biobased chemical that has similarly attracted investment but has yet to achieve wide commercial success. Mitsubishi says in a press release that the business wasn’t growing fast enough or making enough profit to continue. The firm’s exit is the end for the joint venture, which halted production at its site in Thailand in December. The plant is being dismantled and sold for parts.
─Craig Bettenhausen
Akros opens pilot plant for salt-based hydrogen storage
Officials from Akros Energy and partner organizations opened the firm’s pilot plant on May 5. Credit:
Akros Energy
Akros Energy has inaugurated a pilot plant in Laage, Germany, where it will test a salt-based hydrogen storage method. Hydrogen is a carbon-free fuel, but storing and transporting the explosive gas is challenging. Some firms are developing ammonia and organic molecules as hydrogen carriers. Akros contends that these carriers have drawbacks and that a better approach is to store hydrogen by reacting it with potassium bicarbonate to form potassium formate. Hydrogen is released by reversing the reaction. The chemical maker Evonik Industries and the engineering firm Siemens contributed financing and know-how to the project.
─Michael McCoy
Koppers to shut down Illinois coal tar distillation plant
The wood preservation chemical maker Koppers plans to close its plant in Stickney, Illinois, by the end of the year. The site, near Chicago, converts the coal tar by-product of steelmaking into pitch, refined tars, oils, creosote, and other derivatives, primarily through distillation. Koppers will shift production to a more modern plant in Nyborg, Denmark, and says it has already upgraded its logistics to handle increased shipments between Denmark and the US. The decision will eliminate 85 jobs in Illinois and cost roughly $250 million over the next few years but will eventually increase profits by $15 million–$20 million per year, the firm says. Koppers is negotiating terms with the union that represents employees at the site.
─Craig Bettenhausen
Quote of the week
“We were supposed to get some helium next week, but we haven’t heard for sure.”
American Battery to build second recycling plant
American Battery Technology (ABT) says it plans to build a second lithium-ion battery recycling plant, in the southeastern US. In 2023, the company opened a plant in Nevada capable of processing 20,000 metric tons (t) of material per year. ABT says it has significantly ramped up production over the past several months. The facility is currently processing batteries that were damaged during a fire at a grid-scale energy storage facility in California last year. The new plant will be able to process 100,000 t per year.
─Matt Blois
BASF funds formic acid–based pest control for bees
A beekeeper applies a formic acid–based mite control product to a honeybee hive. Credit:
BASF
BASF is collaborating with NOD Apiary Products to improve a formic acid–based product that controls parasitic mites in honeybee hives. The product is a polysaccharide gel strip that slowly releases formic acid vapor inside a hive to kill Varroa mites. BASF supplies the formic acid and is funding research for this type of pest control. Varroa mites can transmit viruses to bees and represent a major cause of bee colony collapse, according to US Department of Agriculture researchers. The researchers found that mites are evolving resistance to common chemical treatments such as amitraz.
─Matt Blois
Isomorphic raises $2.1 billion for AI drug discovery
Isomorphic Labs, an artificial intelligence–led drug discovery start-up that spun out of Google DeepMind, has raised $2.1 billion in series B financing. The funding round was led by Thrive Capital, and participants included Alphabet and Google Ventures. The funds will go toward the company’s AI drug design engine, which is capable of working across multiple therapeutic areas and drug modalities, Isomorphic says in a press release. The company says it will also invest in advancing its “pipeline of therapeutic programs towards the clinic” and in shortlisting new targets. Isomorphic was founded in 2021 and is led by Demis Hassabis, a cowinner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on the AlphaFold protein structure prediction algorithm. Isomorphic has partnerships with Novartis, Eli Lilly and Company, and Johnson & Johnson.
─Aayushi Pratap
Regeneron signs $125 million deal for novel ADCs
Regeneron Pharmaceuticals will partner with Parabilis Medicines to develop new antibody-drug conjugates. The collaboration will prioritize joining antibodies made with Regeneron’s VelocImmune technology to Parabilis’s Helicon peptides. Helicons are corkscrew-shaped peptides that may be able to reach “undruggable” intracellular targets, Regeneron says. Parabilis will receive an up-front payment of $50 million, and Regeneron will invest $75 million in Parabilis’s next equity financing. Parabilis is also eligible for milestone and tiered royalty payments from any approved medicines that come out of the collaboration.
─Sarah Braner
