Business Roundup

Dow Chemical will close its organometallic precursors plant in Andover, Mass., next year and shift operations to its electronic materials facility in Cheonan, South Korea. About 50 jobs will be affected. The firm earlier ceased organometallics production in Taoyuan, Taiwan.

Chemours, the former DuPont performance chemicals business, plans to cut its fourth-quarter dividend to shareholders by 95% to $5 million. The firm will pay a $100 million dividend in the third quarter but has said it would reduce its fourth-quarter payout to conserve cash.

Kemira has acquired Soto Industries, a Charlotte, N.C.-based firm that supplies scale control, defoaming, and settling products to the pulp and paper industry. Kemira says the deal demonstrates its dedication to the pulp and paper segment.

AkzoNobel will invest about $1.5 million to build a pilot plant in Felling, England, for making samples of novel coating resins. The firm plans to open the plant in the first quarter of 2016.

Sumitomo Chemical will set up a 120-acre R&D facility for crop protection in São Paulo, Brazil. The facility will be the company’s first in the Southern Hemisphere, where the opposite seasons will allow for additional field trials, it says.

Senomyx, a flavor discovery and development firm, reports its first sales of Sweetmyx S617, a synthetic sweetness enhancer, to PepsiCo. The soft drink maker will test-market the ingredient in its Manzanita Sol and Mug Root Beer in the U.S.

Albany Molecular Research Inc. is joining with Slovakia’s Saneca Pharmaceuticals to develop more than two dozen opium-derived active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Saneca will supply intermediates extracted from plant biomass and some process technology. AMRI will develop these into APIs and obtain regulatory approvals in the U.S.

Novartis and Amgen are combining efforts in select neuroscience treatments. Their lead compound will be Novartis’s CNP520, a small-molecule BACE inhibitor in development for Alzheimer’s disease. Also in the pact are AMG 334 and AMG 301, Amgen’s investigational biologics for migraine.

GlaxoSmithKline and QB3@953, a biotech incubator connected to the University of California, will collaborate to find researchers working on interesting drug targets and help them translate those ideas into drug candidates. The scientists will have access to GSK’s drug discovery expertise while also capitalizing on QB3’s lab space and resources.