Business Roundup

ADA-ES has settled a lawsuit with Norit International over the use of activated carbon to control mercury emissions from power plants. ADA-ES will pay Norit $33 million immediately plus $7.5 million over three years. It must also pay royalties.

Air Products & Chemicals has appointed a member of its corporate executive committee, Stephen J. Jones, as president of operations in China. Jones will relocate to Shanghai but will remain general manager of the company’s tonnage gases, equipment, and energy businesses. Air Products employs 2,200 people in China.

DMV-Fonterra Excipients has agreed to acquire Brahmar Cellulose, an Indian producer of microcrystalline cellulose and sodium carboxymethyl cellulose. DMV, based in Goch, Germany, says the purchase will make it the only firm with all the most commonly used pharmaceutical diluents and superdisintegrants in the industry.

J. M. Huber will add 10,000 metric tons per year of calcium carbonate granulation capacity at its Quincy, Ill., site by the second quarter of 2012. The facility will be integrated with calcium carbonate milling operations at the site and will complement an existing granulation plant in Modesto, Calif.

FMC will distribute Marrone Bio Innovations’ Regalia Maxx biofungicide in Latin America. The deal is the second for FMC in biologic crop protection products; it recently agreed to develop Bacillus-based nematicides from the Danish firm Chr. Hansen.

Pfizer Nutrition and Jennewein Biotechnologie are collaborating to develop human milk oligosaccharides for use in infant formula. Jennewein was founded in 2005 in Rheinbreitbach, Germany, to develop production processes for mono- and oligosaccharides.

Mission Therapeutics, a spin-off of Cancer Research UK and the University of Cambridge, has launched at the Babraham Research Campus in Cambridge, England, with $9.7 million in venture capital backing. The firm will translate cell biology research and DNA repair technology into drugs.

Santhera Pharmaceuticals will focus its operations on selling and further developing Ca­tena, a drug for treating neuromuscular diseases. The Swiss firm will cut its workforce of 47 by 21 jobs, largely in nonclinical research and administration, to have enough cash to operate into 2013.

Tekmira Pharmaceuticals has licensed multivalent RNA technology from Halo-Bio RNAi Therapeutics. The technology enables multiple molecular targets to be shut off with a single macromolecule. Tekmira has already shown the molecules can be delivered using its lipid nanoparticle ­formulations.