Business Roundup

Arkema’s Coatex unit is buying an additives and emulsions plant in Araçariguama, São Paulo, from the Brazilian firm Resicryl. There, Arkema will make products for the paints, adhesives, construction, water treatment, and other industries. With the purchase, Coatex’ annual sales in Brazil will increase to $20 million.

Canada’s government will put up $10 million to help fund Cytec Industries’ expansion of a phosphine and derivatives plant in Welland, Ontario. Last year, Cytec announced it will invest more than $100 million in the project.

International Finance Corp., part of the World Bank, is lending $30 million to an affiliate of the French firm SNF to expand and upgrade a plant in Taixing, China. The plant is already China’s largest supplier of polyacrylamide-based flocculants for water treatment.

Elevance Renewable Sciences and the high-throughput experimentation company HTE are collaborating on the development of biobased specialty lubricants. The project involves a high-throughput autoclave testing unit developed by HTE.

United Phosphorus of India has agreed to buy SD Agchem Europe, a Dutch subsidiary of another Indian agrochemical producer, Punjab Chemicals & Crop Protection. SD Agchem produces and sells agro­chemicals throughout Europe.

BASF has opened a mining research facility at the Australian Minerals Research Centre in Perth. The facility’s staff, six people currently, is expected to reach 20 by 2017. BASF says it will help Australia develop more efficient mineral recovery techniques and reduce the environmental impact of mining.

DSM Pharmaceutical Products will conduct process development and contract manufacturing for an anticancer monoclonal antibody being developed by Brazil’s Recepta Biopharma. DSM will use its facilities in Groningen, the Netherlands.

Ascletis, a drug R&D firm based in Hangzhou, China, has acquired certain Asian marketing rights to a cancer drug candidate, ALN-VSP, discovered by Alnylam Pharmaceuticals. Potentially effective in the treatment of liver cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma, the drug has already completed a Phase I study in the U.S.

AstraZeneca has purchased a portfolio of neuroscience assets from Link Medicine, which has expertise in understanding how misfolded proteins are cleared and recycled. AstraZeneca gains a range of small molecules, in preclinical and clinical studies, that target the enzyme farnesyltransferase.