Business briefing for May 12

 

Air Products describes deep cleantech cuts in new strategy

Air Products and Chemicals CEO Eduardo Menezes laid out a new strategy in the company’s second-quarter earnings call. The conference was his first after taking over as CEO of the industrial gas giant in February following a high-profile shareholder revolt. Menezes described the company’s core businesses as on-site gas supply at larger industrial sites, merchant gas sales, and conventional hydrogen production and pipeline distribution. He set a goal of $1.5 billion per year in capital expenditures for that group of operations. At the same time, Air Products will make deep cuts to its investments in low-carbon hydrogen and other energy transition efforts, with a goal of eliminating nonmaintenance capital spending in those areas by 2030. Maintenance capital expenditures are expected to stay at about $1 billion per year. Menezes said the firm will finish projects that are nearly complete, such as a green hydrogen plant in Arizona, but divest, pause, or avoid new commitments to sustainability-focused projects in earlier stages, including blue hydrogen efforts in Europe. He also said two new coal gasification assets in China were failing to turn a profit, and he has a team optimizing those sites and reorganizing that part of the business. Implementing the strategy will include cutting about 4,500 jobs, Menezes said. Air Products currently employs about 23,000.—CRAIG BETTENAUSEN

 

Chevron interested in buying all of CP Chem

Chevron is interested in buying out its partner, Phillips 66, in their Chevron Phillips Chemical petrochemical joint venture, which they have run together since 2000. CP Chem earned $1.7 billion last year on $12.1 billion in sales. Elliott Investment Management, a major Phillips 66 investor, has been prodding that company to sell off its stake to sharpen its focus on energy-related businesses. In a conference call with analysts, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth praised CP Chem’s competitive cost structure and its promising petrochemical projects in Texas and Qatar. “Getting a larger share of a business that you like is always something that you would take a look at,” he said. “We have advised the partner in CPChem that we'd be interested in acquiring the other half at a reasonable value for both parties.”—ALEX TULLO

 

Celanese to sell electronic ink and paste business

Celanese says it intends to divest its Micromax family of inks and pastes, used in electronics, as part of a debt reduction program. Celanese acquired the business, which it expects will post sales of more than $300 million this year, in 2022 as part of its $11 billion purchase of DuPont’s engineering polymers and elastomers unit. In February, Celanese CEO Scott Richardson said the company would cut costs, shut capacity, and consider divestitures after a challenging 2024.—MICHAEL MCCOY

 

Dow sells Telone fumigants

Dow has sold its Telone soil fumigation product line to TriCal Soil Solutions for $121 million, about 10 times the business’s pretax earnings. The products are based on 1,3-dichloropropene and are used to prevent nematodes. TriCal subsidiary Teleos Ag Solutions has been Dow’s exclusive distributor for the product line since 2020. Dow combined most of its agricultural products with DuPont to form Corteva Agriscience in 2019.—ALEX TULLO

 

Synthomer sells 180 year old William Blythe

The London-based specialty chemical producer Synthomer has agreed to sell William Blythe, its inorganic chemical business, to a management buyout team and H2 Equity Partners for $40 million. The business, which has a manufacturing site in Accrington, England, has 85 employees; last year it generated sales of $72 million and adjusted pretax profits of about $5 million. William Blythe has been making inorganic derivatives of elements such as copper, iodine, tin, tungsten, and zinc for applications including catalysts, performance coatings, and polymers for about 180 years. Synthomer says it wants to focus on higher-value, higher-growth products.—ALEX SCOTT

 

Aduro collaborates on pilot recycling unit

London, Ontario–based Aduro Clean Technologies is collaborating with Siemens Canada on a pilot plastics recycling plant based on Aduro’s Hydrochemolytic technology that is scheduled to start up during the third quarter of this year. Unlike conventional pyrolysis processes, which use only heat to break down plastics into pyrolysis oil, Aduro’s process incorporates water, hydrogen, and a catalyst. Aduro says the process improvement over pyrolysis results in a higher conversion rate to desirable hydrocarbons, lower energy consumption, and less formation of by-products like char and gases. Siemens will provide control systems for the facility.—ALEX TULLO

 

Avantor to seek new CEO

The life sciences tool company Avantor says its CEO, Michael Stubblefield, will step down as soon as a successor is found. “The Board and Mr. Stubblefield agreed that now is the right time to initiate a leadership transition,” a press release says, adding that the board has hired an executive search firm. Avantor disclosed the planned transition the same day it announced that first-quarter sales fell by 6% from the year-earlier period, to $1.58 billion. Stubblefield joined Avantor in May 2014 after stints at consulting firm McKinsey & Co. and the chemical maker Celanese.—MICHAEL MCCOY

 

DMC Bio enters nutraceuticals market with myo-inositol launch

The biobased specialty chemical firm DMC Biotechnologies has launched myo-inositol made via fermentation as an ingredient for nutraceuticals that purportedly offers improved neurotransmitter regulation. According to DMC, conventional production involves harsh synthetic methods or voluminous natural product extraction; both approaches include extensive purification to separate myo-inositol from eight other stereoisomers that are much less valuable. DMC’s core technology is a system for installing metabolic switches into engineered microbes so that fermentation engineers can control growth and production phases with relatively simple chemical cues.—CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN

 

Danish API maker to shut local facility

Xellia Pharmaceuticals, a Danish company that makes antibiotic active pharmaceutical ingredients such as vancomycin, plans to gradually move its production to its facilities outside Denmark. The transition will take over a decade to ensure a “stable supply” of critical medicines. The firm says the decision will not impact employment at its Copenhagen site for at least 3 years. The reasons for the decision include intense price pressure and rising operational expenses, Xellia says.—AAYUSHI PRATAP

 

Nuevocor plans heart condition trial with $45 million

Singaporean biotechnology start-up Nuevocor will begin testing a drug candidate for the genetic heart condition LMNA-related dilated cardiomyopathy after raising $45 million in series B financing. Investors Kurma Partners and Angelini Ventures co-led the funding round. In addition to paying for the trial, the series B will allow Nuevocor to open an office in Paris—thus establishing a footprint in Europe.—ROWAN WALRATH

 

PAQ pivots as it raises $39 million

Biotechnology start-up PAQ Therapeutics has changed tactics and raised $39 million in a series B financing, as first reported by Endpoints News. PAQ launched in 2021 with a plan to develop small molecules that would label proteins and other substances and send them to vesicles called autophagosomes, where they’d be broken down. The firm has since abandoned that plan in favor of a more seasoned approach. It’s now using proteolysis-targeting chimeras (PROTACs), which trigger protein degradation using the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Endpoints reports that PAQ will focus on cancers involving mutations to the KRAS gene.—ROWAN WALRATH

 

Twist spins out DNA data storage company

Twist Bioscience has spun out its DNA data storage arm as an independent company. The new entity, Atlas Data Storage, launched with $155 million in seed funding. DNA data storage involves encoding binary as nucleotides, which are then synthesized into lengths of DNA. When the DNA coded data are needed, the strands can be taken out and sequenced to retrieve the encoded data. Twist will maintain an ownership stake in Atlas.—SARAH BRANER

 

BUSINESS ROUNDUP

Eastman Chemical is moderating capital spending for its planned polyethylene terephthalate depolymerization plant in Longview, Texas. The company says it is still targeting 2028 for mechanical completion of the facility.

Borealis has launched a line of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) designed for footwear midsoles and derived from renewable feedstocks such as vegetable oils and by-products of the timber industry. The company says midsoles made with the materials have a carbon footprint 45% lower than ones made with conventional EVA made with fossil fuel–based materials.

Sun Chemical is implementing a surcharge on products impacted by new tariffs. The pigments producer says the date and amount of the surcharge will vary by country.

Huntsman has added semiconductor-grade amines production at its manufacturing site in Conroe, Texas. The unit will provide high-purity quaternary amines and amine oxides, which are used in etching and cleaning steps during microchip fabrication.

MSSA, the world’s largest producer of sodium metal, says it will double capacity for sodium methylate to 40,000 metric tons per year at its facility in La Rochelle, France. MSSA produces the biodiesel catalyst by reacting sodium and methanol.

Ineos says it faces a $20 million tax bill for carbon emissions from its Grangemouth, Scotland, petrochemical complex in 2024. “These carbon taxes, on top of uncompetitive energy prices, are de-industrialising Britain, while doing nothing for the environment,” the company says in a statement.

Trilobio has raised $8 million in seed funding to further develop what it calls a fully automated robotic lab-in-a-box for biologists and other life sciences researchers. The San Francisco–based firm was founded in 2021 to address data quality and reproducibility challenges in research.