Business Roundup

FrontFour Capital, a hedge fund, has nominated four directors to the board of Sensient Technologies, which FrontFour deems to be underperforming. FrontFour also disclosed it owns a 1.5% stake in the flavors and fragrances maker.

Coatex, the additives subsidiary of France’s Arkema, has licensed its microencapsulation technology to M2i Life Sciences for use in making agricultural chemicals. M2i, a France-based custom and fine chemicals maker, will use the technology to encapsulate pheromones to be sprayed on high-value crops.

Kaneka will spend $88 million on a 12,000-metric-ton-per-year acrylic fiber facility in Malaysia’s Pahang state. Kaneka plans to export the entire output of the plant, which is expected to begin production in 2015, to Africa, where it will be used in hair extensions.

CP Kelco plans to expand pectin capacity at its plant in Limeira, Brazil, by 30%. The company, a subsidiary of J. M. Huber, says the expansion of the product, extracted from the peels of citrus fruit, is intended to meet growing demand in beverages, confectionary, and dairy products.

Ineos has agreed to purchase shale-gas-sourced ethane from U.S. natural gas firm Consol Energy, starting in 2015, to supply its European ethylene crackers. It is Ineos’s second deal with a U.S. ethane supplier.

Israel Chemicals will partner with Allana Potash to develop a 1 million-metric-ton-per-year potash mine in northeastern Ethiopia. As part of the agreement, ICL will also make a $23 million investment in Allana.

Styron has bought out JSR’s rights to the output of a solution styrene butadiene rubber plant in Schkopau, Germany. The agreement effectively increases its capacity for the specialty rubber, Styron says.

Dako, the cancer diagnostics subsidiary of Agilent, is developing a companion diagnostic test for an unnamed Amgen drug using IQFISH hybridization buffer technology. The buffer technology produces results in less than four hours instead of 17 hours for traditional FISH technology, which is a fluorescence-based cytogenetic technique.

Appistry, a computing and analytics firm, is joining with N-of-One, a provider of personalized medical analyses, to offer genetic data analysis and molecular interpretation services. The joint offering will allow clinicians to use genomic sequencing to understand the molecular profile of a patient’s tumor and then select appropriate targeted therapies.