Business Roundup

Solutia has agreed to pay $3.4 million to Taiwan’s Aimcore Technology for facilities that can produce conductive film. Solutia says the purchase will help it better serve the Asian mobile-electronics and touch-screen markets with its Flexvue conductive film.

Evonik Industries will enter the functionalized polybutadiene market with the construction of a plant to open in Marl, Germany, in the fall of 2012. The firm will sell hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene as an auto adhesive and as a sealing compound for insulated glass.

Linde will build what it is calling Europe’s largest electronics-grade fluorine plant at Schüco’s thin-film silicon photovoltaics facility in Großröhrsdorf, Germany. Schüco will use fluorine in place of nitrogen trifluoride as a chamber-cleaning gas.

BASF Canada and Quantiam Technologies have formed a new business called BASF Qtech that will commercialize Quantiam’s catalytic surface coatings for steam cracker furnace tubes. The partners expect to launch a product for ethane-propane cracking this fall.

Evonik Industries says the doubling of the size of its l-lysine plant, housed at Cargill’s Blair, Neb., corn-processing complex, is six months ahead of schedule. The firm now expects to complete the expansion, to 280,000 metric tons per year, by August 2012.

International Flavors & Fragrances will expand its Caplock flavor encapsulation facility in Haverhill, England. Combined with earlier investments, the project will bring spending on the technology at the site to $10 million, IFF says.

Amakem has raised $25 million in a round of venture capital investment. The Belgian firm will use the funds to advance its ophthalmology drug development portfolio and its lead candidate, a glaucoma treatment, to proof of concept.

Merck Serono and F-Star will collaborate on antibody-derived inflammatory disease drugs that are discovered with F-Star’s Modular Antibody Technology. F-Star, based in Vienna, could get payments of as much as $700 million if all goals are met.