Business Roundup

Evonik Industries will spend more than $15 million to build a business and innovation center near Richmond, Va. The facility, on an 18-acre site near Chesterfield Airport, will allow Evonik to double its laboratory space in Virginia, the company says.

Liquid Light, a venture-capital-backed firm, has unveiled a process for making ethylene glycol and other chemicals from CO₂. Using catalytic electrochemistry developed at Princeton University, the firm says it can help chemical makers reduce dependence on fossil fuels while consuming the greenhouse gas CO₂.

IGM Resins, a supplier of UV-curable materials for inks and coatings, has opened a development lab at its acrylate manufacturing facility in Charlotte, N.C. The company says the lab will develop new monomers and oligomers for customers.

Wacker Chemie has extended a silicon chemistry partnership with the Technical University of Munich for another six years. The Munich-based company will spend about $3.5 million to help fund up to 20 doctoral candidates at the school’s Institute of Silicon Chemistry.

ExxonMobil Chemical will build a 140,000-metric-ton-per-year halobutyl rubber plant and a 90,000-metric-ton hydrogenated hydrocarbon resin plant at its complex in Singapore. The company expects to complete construction of the facilities in 2017.

TA Instruments, part of Waters Corp., has acquired two businesses. One is Expert System Solutions, an Italian firm that makes noncontact optical thermal analysis instrumentation. The other is LaserComp, a supplier of thermal conductivity test instruments based in Massachusetts.

Henkel and CMS Technology will work together to develop food-safe antimicrobial additives for packaging applications. CMS has developed technology for encapsulating active ingredients so they disperse evenly and create what the firm calls a microbial shield.

Biogen Idec and Eisai are joining to develop two Eisai drugs—a small molecule and an antibody—to treat Alzheimer’s disease. At the same time, Eisai will have the option to develop two Biogen biologic compounds also in development to treat the disease.

GlaxoSmithKline has ended development of GSK2586184, a JAK1 inhibitor licensed from Galapagos, as a lupus treatment after a Phase II study failed to show efficacy. GSK also put on hold a study of the compound in ulcerative colitis. Galapagos could still receive milestone payments from GSK if results from a Phase II study of the drug as a psoriasis treatment are positive.