Business Roundup

Dow Chemical is expanding polyols capacity in Map Ta Phut, Thailand, and Freeport, Texas. At Map Ta Phut, the company plans to construct a 165,000-metric-ton-per-year plant for the polyurethane intermediates. In Freeport, the company is planning an unspecified increase in capacity.

BASF is spending $25 million to renovate and expand its catalyst and battery materials research facility in Beachwood, Ohio. When completed in early 2014, the enlarged facility will make space for 40 new employees who will populate new research teams focused on cathode materials and on chemical and process engineering. About 50 employees now work at the site.

Arkema and the Saudi firm Watan Industrial Investment plan to build an organic peroxides plant in Al Jubail, Saudi Arabia. The unit, which is expected to cost $30 million, will be the first organic peroxides plant in the Middle East.

PPG Industries will spend $60 million to build an industrial and performance coatings plant in the Lipetsk region of Russia by 2015. The company says the plant will employ more than 150 people.

Invista will collaborate with synthetic biology firm Ingenza to develop new technologies for biobased routes to industrial chemicals. In August, Invista announced a collaboration with computational modeling firm SilicoLife on processes for making biobased butadiene.

Solvay will spend $27 million to build a sodium bicarbonate plant in Map Ta Phut, Thailand. It will be Southeast Asia’s largest such facility, with a capacity of 100,000 metric tons per year when it starts up in 2015.

Carbogen Amcis is making a series of investments aimed at increasing its capabilities in antibody drug conjugates, used in targeted cancer treatments. The company is spending about $4 million on a cleanroom clinical supply facility in Bubendorf, Switzerland, and nearly $1 million to upgrade a sterile manufacturing area at its Riom, France, location.

Lundbeck, a midsized Danish drug company, has taken a five-month-old restructuring program into a new phase that will result in the loss of up to 200 jobs by 2015. The company says the new program will cost about $35 million. A previously announced phase will mean the loss of up to 55 jobs.

Pfizer has licensed an autoimmune disease drug from Baltimore-based Gliknik. Pfizer will pay the six-year-old firm $25 million plus milestone payments. The drug, GL-2045, is a recombinant compound that has shown promise in preclinical tests, Gliknik says.