Business Roundup

Chemtrade Logistics has completed its $680 million purchase of fellow Canadian inorganics maker Canexus. Chemtrade says the deal makes it one of the largest sodium chlorate producers in North America and diversifies its portfolio with the addition of chlorine.

Avantium has raised $110 million in a public offering on the Amsterdam and Brussels stock exchanges that was oversubscribed, meaning demand for shares exceeded what Avantium intended to sell. The company is developing a route to the biobased polymer polyethylene furanoate.

Neste Jacobs and Coolbrook are working with universities and companies such as Dow Chemical to advance Coolbrook’s Roto Dynamic Reactor technology for naphtha-based hydrocarbon cracking. The technology increases production of ethylene and decreases output of side products.

Callery, BASF’s former inorganic specialties business, has launched as a new company after its sale to Edgewater Capital. Based in Evans City, Pa., Callery calls itself the world’s leading expert in alkoxide bases, borane derivatives, and other highly reactive chemistries.

DSM Sinochem Pharmaceuticals has started patent infringement lawsuits in the Netherlands and India against the Chinese firm Sinopharm Weiqida. DSM Sinochem is asking courts in both countries to ban products made by Weiqida that infringe its patent on amoxicillin trihydrate with low free-water content.

Celgene has picked another drug candidate in its six-year-old research pact with Agios Pharmaceuticals. Celgene will pay Agios an $8 million designation fee for a compound that inhibits a pathway in methylthioadenosine phosphorylase-deleted cancers.

Heptares Therapeutics will win $12 million in fees and research funding from Dai­ichi Sankyo as part of a pact to discover small molecules against an unspecified G protein-coupled receptor that plays a role in pain relief. Dai­ichi secures the global rights to commercialize any drug candidates that come out of the partnership.