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Sterling Pharma Solutions, a UK-based contract development and manufacturing organization serving the drug industry, has acquired NewChem Technologies, a pharmaceutical contract research firm that spun out from Newcastle University’s School of Chemistry in 2002. The firm, located in Newcastle upon Tyne’s Biosphere innovation hub, will coordinate efforts with Sterling’s early-phase development center in Cary, North Carolina. The deal includes all of NewChem’s assets and employees.

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The Indian battery materials firm Epsilon Group has agreed to buy Johnson Matthey’s lithium iron phosphate cathode material technology center in Moosburg, Germany, for an undisclosed sum. Epsilon says it is amid a $1.1 billion investment plan that includes a cathode materials plant in Karnataka, India, as well as expansion in Europe. The firm also plans a $650 million synthetic graphite facility somewhere in the US. Matthey announced in 2021 that it would exit the battery materials business.

EMD Electronics, a subsidiary of Merck KGaA, has opened a 7,000m² factory in Chandler, Arizona, that will make equipment for delivering chemicals and materials used in semiconductor manufacturing. Merck says the $39 million investment is the largest it has made in its semiconductor equipment and services business. The US Southwest has seen a boom of semiconductor manufacturing investment in recent years as a result of government incentives and customer demand to revitalize computer chip manufacturing in North America.

BASF is building a fermentation plant for crop protection products at its site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The plant, to start up in 2025 and employ 30 people, will make biological fungicides and seed treatments. It will also make precursors for BASF’s Inscalis insecticide, which is derived from a fungal strain. The company says the plant is part of a transition to production with lower energy intensity than conventional chemistry.

Mitsubishi Corporation and the Swiss methanol and ammonia producer Proman plan to build a low-carbon ammonia plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The facility will have the capacity to make 1.2 million metric tons per year of ammonia from natural gas; it will capture and sequester the carbon dioxide emissions. The plant will be situated near a methanol plant that Proman is also developing. The ammonia will be exported to Japan. Proman owns a 50% stake in Natgasoline, which operates a methanol plant in Beaumont, Texas, that started up in 2018.

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