Business Roundup

Solvay will acquire Dhaymers, a Brazil-based manufacturer of specialty esters with annual sales of about $10 million. Solvay says the purchase will allow it to enter the Brazilian skin care market and expand in the local industrial lubricants and mining chemicals sectors.

Sumitomo Chemical has acquired DuPont’s U.S.-based Asana insecticide business and will transfer it to its U.S. crop protection subsidiary Valent BioSciences. Developed by DuPont, the Asana line is based on the active ingredient esfenvalerate, a pyrethroid invented by Sumitomo.

Takasago Americas has opened an Encapsulation Technology Center in Rockleigh, N.J., to serve flavor and fragrance customers. The laboratory will develop, test, and evaluate samples. Pilot-plant equipment on-site can scale up sample flavor and fragrance batches.

BASF has agreed to buy the Taiwan and China operations of Taiwan Sheen Soon, a producer of adhesives used in conjunction with thermoplastic polyurethanes. BASF says the purchase will complement its portfolio of thermoplastic urethanes.

Sigma-Aldrich’s shareholders have agreed to a $17 billion acquisition by Germany’s Merck KGaA. The transaction is expected to close in mid-2015, pending regulatory approvals and completion of closing conditions.

Agilent Technologies has opened a mass spectrometry center of excellence at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine. The center will develop research tools and new applications in metabolomics and integrated biology. It will also serve as a site for training students.

Recipharm, a pharmaceutical services firm, says it may have to close its site in Strängnäs, Sweden, and cut 60 jobs. The layoffs are being planned because Meda, a Recipharm customer, recently terminated a contract for the production of penicillin.

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Therapeutics and the drugmaker Shire are launching a $15 million research project aimed at a novel cystic fibrosis treatment. The partners hope to deliver messenger RNA directly to the lungs, where the body will use it to produce working copies of the defective protein associated with the disease.