Business Roundup

Quaker Chemical has acquired Summit Lubricants, a specialty grease manufacturer based in Batavia, N.Y. The price was $30 million, a figure that Quaker expects will be equal to Summit’s 2011 sales.

DuPont has opened a new coatings R&D facility at its Wilmington, Del., Experimental Station that will focus on automotive refinish and industrial coatings. The firm is a significant provider of liquid and powder coating systems.

PolyOne has acquired Brazilian engineered-materials supplier and polymer distributor Uniplen for $21 million up front plus possible additional payments over the next three years. Uniplen had $34 million in 2010 sales.

SAP, a leading supplier of enterprise resource planning software, is setting up a chemical industry center of excellence in Saudi Arabia. The center will supply industry-specific software and consulting services to a market that is expected to be the home base of five of the top 10 chemical producers by 2015, SAP says.

HCL CleanTech, an Israeli firm, is partnering with Virent Energy Systems on a $2.1 million project to convert pine tree sugars into petroleum-like hydrocarbons. The U.S. Department of Energy, the Israeli Ministry of National Infrastructures, and the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial R&D Foundation will provide a $900,000 grant for the project.

Senomyx will work with Cadbury Adams, a unit of Kraft Foods, to develop and commercialize flavor modulators for use in gum and medicated confectioneries. Senomyx, a biotech flavor firm, will receive development funding and milestone payments, as well as royalties on any product sales.

Gulf Resources, a Chinese bromine producer, will pay $10.5 million to acquire a crude salt field from a state-owned company in China’s Shandong province. Gulf says the field will enable it to boost crude salt output while providing a better way to use wastewater from bromine processing.

Veridex, a diagnostic company owned by Johnson & Johnson, will work with Massachusetts General Hospital to develop technology to detect cancer cells that have escaped from tumors and exist in low levels in the bloodstream. The goal is a system to capture, count, and characterize tumor cells in patients’ blood.

Xoma will work with France’s Les Laboratoires Servier to develop and commercialize the anti-inflammatory antibody XOMA 052, which is about to enter Phase III clinical trials. Xoma will receive $35 million up front and up to $470 million in potential milestone payments and royalties.