Investors put money into Europe and biobased chemicals

Two beleaguered corners of the chemical enterprise—Europe and the biobased chemical industry—are enjoying a bit of good news, as our weekly roundup below shows.

In Europe, the private investment firm International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG) is acquiring a German inorganic chemical facility from Venator, a pigment manufacturer now in receivership. ICIG probably isn’t paying a lot, but that it is picking up a distressed asset can be seen as a positive sign for Europe. ICIG, a longtime buyer of plants no longer wanted by big companies, recently agreed to buy BASF’s optical brighteners business in Switzerland.

And in biobased chemicals, the food ingredient maker Primient apparently sees value. It is taking over a venture in Tennessee, built 20 years ago by a DuPont partnership, that makes 1,3-propanediol from corn. Meanwhile, Natural Fiber Welding, which produces biobased textiles and rubber, is getting new investors after almost going out of business. Elsewhere, though, the news isn’t so good. As C&EN’s Craig Bettenhausen reports, Viridis Chemical is halting—at least temporarily—a project to make ethyl acetate from corn-derived ethanol.

Questions? Comments? Tips? Email Michael McCoy, C&EN’s executive editor for business, at m_mccoy@acs.org

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Business in brief

Venator sells off another plant in liquidation

Venator Materials, which has been in the process of liquidation since last September, has agreed to sell its Duisburg, Germany, site to the International Chemical Investors Group, a private industrial investor. Financial terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, but all 350 employees at the site will be retained. Venator makes functional additives such as barium sulfate and zinc salts and sulfides in Duisburg. The company operated a titanium dioxide plant at the site that makes specialized grades, but in 2024 it unveiled a plan to transfer TiO2 production to its plant in Uerdingen, Germany, and stop making the pigment in Duisburg. In October, Venator agreed to sell its Greatham, England, TiO2 plant to the Chinese firm LB Group. It is selling its aquamarine blue pigment business in France to another private industrial investor, Mutares.

—Alex Tullo

Nylon maker Domo limps on in Germany

Manufacturing at three German subsidiaries of the Belgian polymer maker Domo Chemicals will continue “with production at a minimal level for the time being,” the company says in a press release. Domo disclosed Dec. 25 that the subsidiaries had filed for insolvency. But the German state of Saxony-Anhalt has ordered the plants to continue running because inclement weather could preclude their safe shutdown. Domo says the ruling gives it “valuable time” to explore other options for the businesses, including their sale. The subsidiaries produce the nylon 6 intermediate, caprolactam, as well as phenol, acetone, cumene, cyclohexanone, and ammonium sulfate, in Leuna; they make nylon 6 resins in Premnitz. Domo filed for insolvency because it lacked funds to pay its suppliers. The company says it has struggled in the face of high energy costs, weak demand for its products, and imports from China.

—Alex Scott

BASF to buy biological insect control firm AgBiTech

BASF has agreed to buy the US biological insect control firm AgBiTech from the private equity firm Paine Schwartz Partners for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2000, AgBiTech develops insecticides based on a naturally occurring virus, nucleopolyhedrovirus. The company has operations in Australia, Brazil, and the US, countries where its insecticides are applied to crops including corn, cotton, and soybean. AgBiTech’s products are a solution for chewing insects, such as lepidoptera caterpillars, a long-standing concern for Brazilian farmers, Sergi Vizoso-Sansano, senior vice president for Latin America at BASF Agricultural Solutions, says in a press release. 

—Alex Scott

Primient to take control of biobased propanediol plant

The plant-based ingredient company Primient has agreed to buy out its partner, Covation Biomaterials, in Primient Covation, a joint venture in Loudon, Tennessee, that produces 1,3-propanediol by fermenting corn sugar. Tate & Lyle and DuPont opened the plant in 2007. Primient is a corporate successor to Tate & Lyle, while Covation acquired DuPont’s share of the venture in 2022. That deal included a DuPont plant in Kinston, North Carolina, that produces Sorona, a polyester fiber made by reacting propanediol and purified terephthalic acid. Primient will supply propanediol to Covation under a long-term agreement. Covation says the sale will allow it to focus on commercializing the production of polytetramethylene ether glycol, an intermediate for spandex and polyurethanes, from corn cobs.

—Michael McCoy

Dow chief technology officer A.N. Sreeram to retire

A.N. Sreeram, Dow’s senior vice president and chief technology officer (CTO), is retiring from the company at the end of June. In his role as CTO, Sreeram was replaced by Andre Argenton on Jan. 1. Argenton has been Dow’s chief sustainability officer and now leads both its R&D and its environment, health, safety, and sustainability organizations. Sreeram had headed R&D at Dow since 2014. He was the 2020 recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Henry F. Whalen Jr. Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the development and management of business in the chemical enterprise. (ACS publishes C&EN.) On Sreeram’s watch, Dow has worked on projects such as catalytic dehydrogenation of ethane and propane.

—Alex Tullo

Symrise in talks to sell its terpene chemical business

The flavor and fragrance ingredient maker Symrise says it is in advanced talks with various parties to sell its terpene chemical business. The company says that based on offers received so far in the structured bidding process, it will be forced to take an impairment charge of about $168 million. Symrise got into the business in 2015, when it acquired the pine chemical firm Pinova for $420 million. At the time, Symrise said the purchase, which included plants in Georgia and Florida, would boost its aroma molecules business and capitalize on the trend toward natural and renewable raw materials. Separately, the German firm is taking a charge of about $174 million to account for a decrease in the value of its investment in Swedencare, a pet health products business.

—Michael McCoy

Solstice will expand Spectra ballistic materials

Solstice Advanced Materials plans to invest $220 million to expand production at its ballistic fiber plant in Colonial Heights, Virginia. At the site, the company makes its Spectra ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene fibers and composites, which are used in ballistic armor, vests, and helmets and other applications. The investment, which will add fiber spinning, composite coating, and analytical capabilities, is expected to wrap up by 2030. Solstice is getting a $3.5 million grant from the Commonwealth of Virginia. The company says Spectra fibers are 65% lighter than aramid fibers, a competing ballistic material.

—Alex Tullo

Altris to make sodium-ion cathode material in Europe

The Swedish sodium-ion battery developer Altris and the Czechia-based specialty chemical firm Draslovka are joining to produce commercial quantities of Prussian white cathode material used in sodium-ion batteries. Draslovka will convert a specialty chemical plant at its site in Kolín, Czechia, to make up to 350 metric tons per year of the material. As part of the agreement, Draslovka will invest $22.3 million in Altris and provide the partnership with process technology expertise. The partners are jointly working on the design of the plant, which they plan to open by year-end. “Europe is no longer waiting for sodium-ion to mature elsewhere—we are industrialising it here, with Western manufacturing and Western supply,” Altris CEO Christer Bergquist says in a press release. Draslovka struck a deal last year to supply Natron Energy, a US sodium-ion battery developer, with Prussian blue material made in Kolín.

—Alex Scott

Quote of the week

Natural Fiber Welding brings in strategic investors

The sustainable textile maker Natural Fiber Welding (NFW) has brought on two strategic investors, Provest Equity Partners and CTW Venture Partners, to help improve and scale up production. The investment represents a turnaround for NFW, which last fall told local news outlets in Peoria, Illinois, that it would be winding down operations. The firm, one of C&EN’s 10 Start-Ups to Watch in 2021, has a suite of chemical technologies that lengthen, fuse, and otherwise alter natural polymers to enhance the mechanical properties of biobased and recycled textiles and rubber. Suhas Uppalapati, managing partner of Provest Equity Partners and now chairman of NFW, says in a press release, “Our role is to translate innovation into scalable, profitable growth, and we are excited to partner with NFW and CTW as the company enters its next phase.”

—Craig Bettenhausen

Thermo Fisher, Nvidia partner to automate laboratories

Thermo Fisher Scientific, a scientific instrument manufacturer, has partnered with the computer chip maker Nvidia to leverage artificial intelligence for laboratory automation. The companies say in an announcement that they will combine their expertise to develop instruments with “better AI capabilities” that can reduce manual work involved in tasks such as sample preparation, instrument operation, and result interpretation. “We are entering the era of ‘lab-in-the-loop’ science where the trinity of AI, agents and instruments will be able to scale scientific discovery at an industrial pace,” Kimberly Powell, vice president of health care at Nvidia, says in the announcement.

—Aayushi Pratap

AbbVie buys rights to PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibody

AbbVie will pay $650 million for the rights outside China to a biospecific antibody from China-based RemeGen. The antibody, RC148, binds the immune checkpoint protein PD-1 and the anticancer target VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor). Several big companies have been buying up PD-1/VEGF bispecifics, many developed by Chinese firms, to add to their oncology portfolios. The hope is that going after two well-validated targets with one molecule could fight tumors more effectively and overcome tumor resistance mechanisms. In a news release announcing the deal, AbbVie says that PD-1/VEGF bispecific antibodies may also create a favorable environment for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) to work. It also says that in early clinical studies, “RC148 has shown initial favorable antitumor activity in combination with an ADC.”

—Laura Howes

Caldera launches with $112 million for bispecific antibodies

Caldera Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts–based start-up, has emerged from stealth with $112 million to develop a bispecific antibody for treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Caldera’s antibody, CLD-423, was licensed from a Chinese pharmaceutical company and targets the IL-23p19 and TL1A pathways known to play a role in IBD. The IL-23p19 pathway is already the target of approved drugs like AbbVie’s Skyrizi, and drug candidates targeting TL1A are in clinical trials. Caldera’s leadership hopes CLD-423 will have increased efficacy because it targets both pathways. The firm has begun dosing healthy patients in a Phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the drug candidate’s safety.

—Max Barnhart

What we’re reading

Microplastics may not be as pervasive in the human body as thought: the GuardianThe Scope method of counting carbon emissions involves double counting, but there’s a reason for that: PersefoniThe US expects natural gas prices to fall slightly this year before rising in 2027: US Energy Information AdministrationThe Swedish full-body scan company Neko is coming to the US: the New York Times