Business Roundup

Dupont is establishing a plant in Baddi, India, to make disinfectants, cleaners, and sanitizers for animal health and hospital use. The company says the plant, which will be completed at the end of this month, will help prevent the spread of viruses in the Indian livestock industry.

JohnsonDiversey says it has mobilized in response to the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the U.K. by creating a "foot-and-mouth crisis team" to respond to customer inquiries. It also says it has increased production of foot-and-mouth disinfectants and delivered five months' worth of inventories of such products over the weekend of Aug 4.

Celanese has restarted its Clear Lake, Texas, acetic acid unit and is producing at its nameplate capacity of 1.2 million tons per year. The facility has been off-line since mid-May because of an "unplanned outage." Unsuccessful repairs led to an extended outage during which customers were put on allocation.

The European Commission has cleared the proposed acquisition of GE Plastics by Saudi Basic Industries Corp. after concluding that the deal had no significant anticompetitive effect in the European Economic Area. Separately, the commission is scheduled to decide this month on the proposed acquisition by Ineos of the engineering thermoplastics business of Lanxess.

Huntsman Corp. completed the sale of its U.S. polymers business to Flint Hills Resources, the chemicals and refining subsidiary of Koch Industries, for $350 million. Still to come is the sale to Flint Hills of Huntsman's ethylene cracker; the sale is expected to close later this year.

3M has settled an intellectual property lawsuit against Sony, thereby ending a dispute filed in the Minnesota District Court in March. The settlement calls for Sony to license 3M's patented lithium-ion battery technology covering cathode materials containing nickel, manganese, and cobalt.

Merck and Neuromed Pharmaceuticals announced last week they have halted development of NMED-160, a Phase II treatment of chronic pain, claiming the compound does not demonstrate the ideal pharmaceutical characteristics necessary for advanced development. The partners say they will continue to evaluate alternative early-stage candidates.

ExxonMobil Chemical has begun production of butyl rubber at its Notre Dame de Gravenchon plant in France using new proprietary technology. The process increases capacity of existing lines, improves energy efficiencies, and enables polymerization to run at more efficient temperatures.

DuPont has settled a patent infringement lawsuit filed in Nanjing, China, against Trustchem. The settlement calls for Trustchem to pay unspecified monetary damages and make a public apology to DuPont for the illegal sale of products containing the crop protection herbicide rimsulfuron.

Chemtura completed the sale of its organic peroxides business and Marshall, Texas, manufacturing facility to Germany's Pergan. The business has 40 employees and annual sales of $20 million.