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Business briefing for March 24

FDA recalls 6 acne products because of benzene

The US Food and Drug Administration has issued a recall for a set of acne products because they contain elevated levels of benzene, a known carcinogen. The recalls affect certain lots of six products tested by the FDA and one product tested by the manufacturer. It instructs retailers to pull the affected products from shelves and online sales. All the recalled products use benzoyl peroxide as their main active ingredient. The findings are the latest in a string of incidents in which benzene has been found in US consumer products above the levels legally allowed. The contract analytical laboratory Valisure has been proactively screening several categories of personal care products for benzene and has filed several citizen petitions with the FDA seeking recalls. “This ongoing issue underscores the critical need for independent testing to be expanded and better integrated into our fragile medical supply chain,” Valisure president David Light says.—CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN

OMV wins EU funds for recycling

OMV has secured an $89 million grant from the European Commission to build a plant that can convert up to 200,000 metric tons (t) per year of used plastics into an oil that can be turned into new plastics. The Austrian petrochemical maker says the grant is the largest public funding award it has ever received for a stand-alone project, but it has not made a final decision on whether to build the plant. Another European firm, the start-up Xycle, recently announced plans to build a 21,000 t plastics recycling facility in the Port of Rotterdam with the help of investors including Dow.—ALEX SCOTT

BASF launches water electrolyzer

A worker walks on a gangplank in a chemical plant.

Credit: BASF

A worker walks through BASF’s new water electrolyzer.

BASF has opened what it calls Germany’s largest proton-exchange membrane electrolyzer at its headquarters site in Ludwigshafen. The company says the 54 MW installation can produce up to 1 metric ton of hydrogen per hour by splitting water. When the electrolyzer runs on electricity from renewable sources it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the site by up to 72,000 metric tons per year, BASF says. State and local governments paid for more than 80% of the facility’s cost of about $163 million.—MICHAEL MCCOY

Solvent recycling firm gets financing

The solvent recycler CleanPlanet Chemical has secured a $30 million investment from an arm of the financial services firm TIAA. CleanPlanet says 80% of solvents are not recycled and are often incinerated. The company says its distillation machines can recycle at customers’ own facilities most solvents used in the packaging, coatings, and automotive industries. CleanPlanet says it will use the funds to scale up its technology, which last year recycled 6,800 metric tons of solvent waste.—MATT BLOIS.

Syensqo removes some fluorosurfactants

Syensqo is launching a line of FFKM-type fluoroelastomers that are manufactured without fluorosurfactant processing aids. FFKM elastomers have more fluorine content than FKM-type ones, and these are the first to be made without fluorosurfactants, the company says. Syensqo switched to nonfluorinated surfactants at its polyvinylidene fluoride plant in West Deptford, New Jersey, in 2021. It has also stopped using fluorosurfactants for its FKM fluoroelastomer production. Syensqo produces the new FFKM materials in Spinetta, Italy.—ALEX TULLO.

Tronox to close Dutch pigment plant

Tronox Holdings says it will shutter its titanium dioxide plant in Botlek, the Netherlands, affecting about 240 permanent staffers at the site. Tronox, one of the world’s largest producers of the white pigment, says that the site is currently closed because of an outage at its chlorine supplier but that it does not expect to reopen the facility. In a press release, CEO John D. Romano attributes the shutdown decision to “the ongoing global supply imbalance caused by Chinese competition as well as an increasingly challenged operating environment.” Tronox operates eight other TiO2 plants around the world and says customers won’t be affected.—MICHAEL MCCOY

Carester gets cash for rare earth plant

Carester has secured $236 million from the French government and Japanese investors to build an industrial-scale refining facility for rare earth elements in France. It will recycle magnets and refine mined rare earth concentrates to produce 600 metric tons (t) per year of dysprosium and terbium oxides and 800 t of neodymium and praseodymium oxides. Six-year-old Carester says the facility will be the largest Western source of purified heavy rare earths, able to supply around 15% of global demand for dysprosium and terbium. In January, MP Materials said its facility in Texas was ready to start making rare earths from ore mined in California.—MATT BLOIS.

ReSource raises money for FDCA

ReSource Chemical has raised $15 million to build a pilot plant for making 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid (FDCA)—a building block for polyethylene furanoate—from carbon dioxide. Investors include Chevron Technology Ventures and Mitsubishi Gas Chemical. The California-based company claims its approach cuts more than two-thirds of the complexity associated with making FDCA. ReSource’s technology was coinvented in the lab of Stanford University chemistry professor Matthew Kanan. Others pioneering FDCA production include the Dutch firm Avantium, which opened its first plant in October.—ALEX SCOTT.

Epic Cleantec unveils wastewater whiskey

Bottles of whiskey sit on a table at a conference.

Credit: Craig Bettenhausen/C&EN

Whiskey made with wastewater on display at South by Southwest

Beer made from recycled wastewater has been a minitrend in the craft brewing world since the water reuse start-up Epic Cleantec partnered with Devil’s Canyon Brewing in 2023. Epic CEO Aaron Tartakovsky upped the ante earlier this month during a panel discussion at the South by Southwest conference when he gave each of his fellow speakers a bottle of wastewater whiskey. The spirit is a limited run for which Sonoma Distilling used shower and laundry water that Epic purified. Tartakovsky said the release is another way to get people past the “yuk” factor and embrace water recycling.—CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN

AstraZeneca to buy cell therapy firm

AstraZeneca has agreed to pay up to $1 billion to buy the cell therapy developer EsoBiotech. AstraZeneca will spend $425 million when the deal closes in the next few months and up to $575 million more if EsoBiotech hits certain milestones. EsoBiotech is behind a technology that uses lentiviruses to deliver genetic instructions to T cells so that they learn to fight cancer and autoreactive cells. If the technology bears out in human trials, it could become an in vivo, “off-the-shelf” alternative to current cell therapies that involve removing a person’s cells to program them in a lab.—ROWAN WALRATH

Sofinnova to fund more European biotechs

The investment firm Sofinnova Partners will invest in European biotech start-ups with a $180 million fund called Biovelocita II. Backed by Big Pharma companies including Amgen, Bristol Myers Squibb, and Pfizer, the new fund will help expand Sofinnova’s investment arm beyond Italy and into France, the UK, and Denmark. Earlier Biovelocita-funded start-ups are developing drugs for fibrosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and cancer.—ROWAN WALRATH

Latigo raises cash for pain relievers

Latigo Biotherapeutics has raised $150 million in series B funding to advance its nonopioid pain reliever drug candidates. Latigo is developing Nav1.8 inhibitors, which block the activity of sodium channels involved in pain signaling without addictive effects. Latigo has two candidates in the clinic; LTG-001 has completed a Phase 1 trial, and LTG-305 is currently in a Phase 1 trial. Vertex Pharmaceuticals received US Food and Drug Administration approval for its Nav1.8 inhibitor, Journavx, in January.—SARAH BRANER

Business Roundup

DuPont has named Jon Kemp CEO of the $6 billion-per-year electronic materials company it plans to spin off on Nov. 1. Kemp has led DuPont’s electronics and industrial business for the past 6 years.

Photanol, a Dutch start-up that uses cyanobacteria to convert carbon dioxide into chemicals, has filed for bankruptcy. Photanol says it was about to build a multiton scale demonstration plant in Delfzijl, the Netherlands, when a key industrial partner withdrew support.

Nitricity has raised $10 million from investors to finance a plant in California that will produce low-carbon nitrogen fertilizers from almond waste. The facility will be 100 times as large as systems the firm currently uses.

BASF plans to buy pyrolysis oil made from mixed plastic waste from Braven Environmental for use as a raw material at a petrochemical plant in Port Arthur, Texas. Braven runs a plastics recycling facility in North Carolina and plans to build another one in Texarkana, Texas.

Huntsman and Advanced Material Development (AMD) will collaborate on developing composites based on Huntsman resins and AMD carbon nanotubes. Huntsman researchers will work with AMD teams affiliated with Rice University and the University of Sussex, AMD says.

AstraZeneca has licensed technology from the South Korean firm Alteogen for creating subcutaneous versions of oncology drugs. Alteogen’s ALT-B4 is a hyaluronidase enzyme that can enable the subcutaneous delivery of drugs that are typically administered as an infusion, AstraZeneca says.

Boehringer Ingelheim has tapped the Swedish firm Salipro Biotech to discover and develop drugs targeting G protein–coupled receptors, ion channels, and transporters, among others. Salipro says it will contribute its technology for stabilizing membrane proteins in their native forms.

H.E.L. Group, a developer of lab safety and optimization tools, will work with India’s Institute of Chemical Technology to advance process safety in chemical synthesis. The institute will integrate an H.E.L. process development reaction calorimeter into chemical synthesis workflows.

Chemical & Engineering News

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