Business Roundup

KMG Chemicals is acquiring Valves Inc. of Texas (Val-Tex) for $23.5 million in cash, plus other stock-based remuneration. Val-Tex supplies industrial lubricants and sealants, and earned $3.4 million on $12 million in sales during its last fiscal year. It also owns a 5.2% stake in KMG.

a title="Dow" href="http://www.dowagro.com/">Dow AgroSciences and start-up firm Radiant Genomics will cooperate to develop natural crop protection chemistries. The effort will combine Radiant’s metagenomic product discovery platform with

VUV Analytics, maker of a vacuum ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy instrument, has raised $9 million from investors. VUV will use the money to commercialize the instrument.

Kuraray has acquired Australia-based Plantic Technologies, a maker of biobased barrier films for food packaging. Plantic, whose films are based on high-amylose starch, has annual sales of about $25 million.

Arvia Technology has raised $6 million from investors to demonstrate its graphene-material-based wastewater treatment process. The England-based firm’s technology comes out of the University of Manchester’s School of Chemical Engineering & Analytical Science.

American Vanguard has acquired Adama Agricultural Solutions’ European Nemacur fenamiphos insecticide and nematicide assets. In 2010, American Vanguard bought Nemacur assets outside Europe from Bayer.

Valeant Pharmaceuticals will lay off 258 workers at North Carolina-based Salix Pharmaceuticals, which it recently acquired for $16 billion. Valeant plans to maintain a limited presence in Raleigh, N.C.

Takeda Pharmaceutical will transfer to Osaka Gas Chemicals its 54% stake in Mizusawa Industrial Chemicals. Founded in 1937 and currently employing 350, Mizusawa produces activated clay for use as adsorbent material, resin additives, and stabilizers for polyvinyl chloride resins.

Merck & Co. will work with Arvinas, a New Haven, Conn.-based biotech firm, on technology to degrade target proteins. The partners will use Arvinas’s proteolysis-targeting chimeras, bifunctional small molecules that induce a cell’s machinery to bind to a particular protein and “label” it for degradation.