Business Roundup

Univar, a leading chemical distributor, will acquire Texas-based Magnablend for an undisclosed sum. With expected sales of more than $400 million this year, Magnablend offers custom chemical manufacturing, blending, and packaging, particularly for the oil and gas market.

Piedmont Chemical is launching what it calls renewable polyester polyols for the production of urethane foams, coatings, adhesives, and sealants. The polyols are made with propanediol from DuPont Tate & Lyle BioProducts and succinic acid from Myriant. Both ingredients are made from sugar.

Mitsubishi Rayon will spend $22 million to acquire Aldila, a California-based manufacturer of carbon-fiber shafts for golf clubs and archery products. Aldila says it will be joining a world-class composites company that is back-integrated into all raw materials.

Ecolab has amended its agreement to buy Champion Technologies, saying it will not purchase the drilling services firm’s downstream process and water solutions business. Instead, the business will be spun off to shareholders of Champion’s parent company, Permian Mud Service. Ecolab will now pay $2.16 billion, rather than $2.20 billion, for Champion.

Chemtura and Caterpillar will jointly develop new applications of Chemtura’s Duracast hot-cast urethane prepolymer technology for construction and mining equipment. Initial products will include nonpneumatic tires for harsh operating environments.

Amvac Chemical has formed a joint venture with life sciences company TyraTech to develop pesticides with plant oils and other natural ingredients from TyraTech. The new products will be sold to household, crop protection, seed treatment, and lawn and garden markets.

Sekisui Chemical will raise chlorinated polyvinyl chloride capacity by 20% to 40,000 metric tons per year at its plant in Shunan, Japan. The material is used to make heat-resistant water pipes.

Nantero has closed a $10 million financing round involving existing venture capital investors and two new corporate R&D partners. The Massachusetts-based firm will use the money to help commercialize semiconductor memory storage devices that use carbon nanotubes.

AstraZeneca has signed an agreement with the U.K.’s Health & Social Care Information Centre to develop means for linking disparate sources of health information from the country’s National Health Service. The partnership will initially investigate how integrated health care data can be used to identify unmet clinical needs for patients with diabetes.