Business Roundup

The Chemical Industries Association, a U.K. trade group, says almost 90% of its member companies expect sales to remain at current levels or increase in the next 12 months. Three-quarters of the firms surveyed also expect to maintain or expand their current workforce, and 95% will maintain or increase R&D spending.

Yara International will spend $425 million to buy the Latin American fertilizer maker OFD Holding from Omimex Resources. With sales last year of $796 million, OFD manufactures nitrogen and other fertilizers in Cartagena, Colombia.

DIC will build a $10 million plant in Irvine, Calif., to produce natural blue food coloring. The Japanese company will extract the material from spirulina, a health supplement made from algae that the company grows at an adjacent facility.

Vencorex, a joint venture between Thailand’s PTT Global Chemical and Sweden’s Perstorp, will build a facility in Thailand that makes derivatives of hexamethylene diisocyanate. The 12,000-metric-ton-per-year plant will supply the ingredients to manufacturers of polyurethane coatings.

Wacker Chemie will double dispersible polymer capacity at its site in Nanjing, China, to 60,000 metric tons annually by next year. The vinyl acetate-ethylene materials are used for making dry-mix building mortars such as ceramic tile adhesives.

FourQuest Energy, an oil-field services company, has acquired Houston-based Odyssey Technologies, which supplies custom chemicals to FourQuest. Odyssey specializes in degassing and decontamination chemicals that remove hydrogen sulfide, scale, grease, and odors.

Global Bioenergies has received a $7.7 million grant from the German government to help construct a pilot plant near Leipzig, Germany, that will produce 100 metric tons per year of renewable isobutene via fermentation. The French biotech firm’s first pilot, a collaboration with Arkema, launched in June in France.

Evogene, an Israeli plant genomics firm, raised $73.8 million in an initial public offering of stock on the New York Stock Exchange, including $12 million in stock bought by Monsanto. Evogene uses biotechnology and breeding to increase crop yield and resistance to drought and disease.

Cipla, an Indian generic drug producer, has paid $15 million for an additional 14.5% stake in Quality Chemical Industries, a Ugandan producer of antiretroviral and antimalarial drugs. The transaction will give Cipla a 51% stake in the firm.