Business Roundup

The German Federation of Chemical Employers has negotiated a 3.7% pay increase with the IG BCE German employee union through April 2015. The agreement covers 550,000 employees at 1,900 chemical and pharmaceutical firms. In their last agreement, in May 2012, the union and employers settled on a 4.5% pay hike.

Bluestar Silicones says it will support long-term medical implantation of silicone as part of a strategy to expand in the health care market. Most silicone makers withdrew from the long-term medical implant market in the late 1990s after thousands of women sued the makers charging that silicone breast implants made them ill. Based in Lyon, France, Bluestar Silicones was formed in 2007 through China National Bluestar’s acquisition of Rhodia’s silicones business.

Haldor Topsøe, a catalyst and process technology firm, has acquired an 18% stake in battery maker Faradion, based in Yorkshire, England. The two firms will develop and scale up Faradion’s sodium-ion technology for renewable energy, stationary storage, and transportation applications.

Axiall has named a partner, Lotte Chemical of South Korea, with which it plans to build an ethane cracker in Louisiana with a capacity of 1 million metric tons per year. The cracker is the 10th to be announced in the past two years.

Clariant has agreed to sells its African water treatment chemicals business for $38 million to AECI, an explosives and specialty chemical producer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. The soon-to-be-acquired business has 210 staffers and generated sales in 2013 of $46 million.

Solvay has opened a 12,000-sq-ft R&D center at Singapore’s Biopolis research hub. The center will support the company’s home and personal care, coatings, and oil and gas businesses. The firm expects to invest $7 million over the next five years to expand the lab’s capabilities, including hiring 30 new researchers.

Illumina, a maker of gene sequencing and analysis tools, says it is launching a business accelerator program that will help early-stage companies rapidly bring gene-sequencing applications to market. Applications are due on May 16. Three companies will be chosen to get $100,000 each in support in the initial six-month program. Winners will also get lab space in San Francisco’s Mission Bay near Illumina’s planned R&D facilities.

The Innovative Medicines Initiative, a partnership among the European Commission and pharmaceutical companies, has launched the next project in its New Drugs for Bad Bugs series. Under the six-year, $115 million program, a consortium of 32 public and private partners, led by GlaxoSmithKline and Sweden’s Uppsala University, will work to discover and develop novel antibiotics targeting gram-negative pathogens.