Business Roundup

Braskem plans to invest, through 2011, $50 million in the U.S. polypropylene business it purchased from Sunoco earlier this year. Manufacturing assets will get $35 million of the funds. In particular, the firm will invest $15 million in La Porte, Texas, to idle a slurry technology line and expand a Spheripol process unit.

Arkema plans to build a $30 million acrylic emulsion polymers plant in Changshu, China, to supply coatings and adhesives customers starting in late 2012. The firm says it is on track to start up a polyvinylidene fluoride plant, also in Changshu, to supply high-performance coatings customers beginning early next year.

Cabot Microelectronics has signed a nonbinding agreement with South Korea’s Gyeonggi province to set up R&D and manufacturing facilities there. Cabot Micro, the world’s largest supplier of chemical mechanical planarization slurries for semiconductor production, says it could invest $10 million.

Innophos Holdings will spend $4.5 million to double capacity in Nashville, Tenn., for its calcium phosphate leavening agents. To be completed by mid-2011, the project is aimed at food industry customers that want to reduce sodium levels in their products, Innophos says.

JSR will spend $7 million to set up an R&D facility for liquid-crystal-display materials in South Korea, which is home to the world’s largest LCD producers. Fitted with a clean room and a range of evaluation instruments, the facility will be operational in July 2011, JSR says.

LG Chem will build facilities in South Korea to produce acrylates and superabsorbent polymers, both acrylic acid derivatives. The plants will cost a total of $267 million, the Korean firm says.

Zeolyst International, a joint venture of PQ Corp. and a Shell subsidiary, is doubling the capacity of its zeolite facility in Kansas City, Kan. Much of the new capacity is for specialty zeolites used in selective catalytic reduction for diesel emission control, the firm says.

Thermo Fisher Scientific and Proteome Sciences will collaborate to advance protein biomarker research. Under the pact, Proteome Sciences will combine its proprietary mass tag technology for biomarker discovery, qualification, and assay validation with Thermo’s mass spectrometry technology.

Palatin Technologies is cutting half its workforce, or about 20 people, and ending discovery-phase research in order to focus on its lead drug candidates. The biotech firm plans to move its sexual dysfunction compound bremelanotide into Phase II trials in early 2011.