Business Roundup

Kemira will spend up to $70 million to expand sodium chlorate capacity at its site in Joutseno, Finland, by fourth-quarter 2017. Nordic consumption of the bleaching agent is growing, Kemira says, due to recent pulp mill expansions and other planned projects.

Arsenal Capital Partners, a private equity firm, is buying and combining three U.S. makers of foam material for bedding and upholstery. To be known as Elite Foam Solutions, the business will operate 10 production facilities supplying polyurethane and other foam materials.

Teijin will spend $13 million to expand capacity for p-aramid fiber at its plant in Matsuyama, Japan. The material is used in protective clothing, in ropes and cables, and as reinforcement in automotive rubber parts.

Chevron Phillips Chemical is moving forward with plans to expand its 50,000-metric-ton-per-year poly α-olefins plant in Baytown, Texas, by 20%. The company expects to complete the project, meant to meet demand for high-performance lubricants, next year.

Dow Chemical has signed an agreement with the Argentina firm Invap to build a wind farm in Cerro Policía, Argentina. The partners envisage a $123 million, multistage project to erect 20 wind turbines that together put out 50 MW of power.

Asahi Kasei and PeptiDream have agreed to collaborate on the discovery and development of nonstandard peptides, including novel amino acids, that may be effective against multiple targets. Tokyo-based PeptiDream has developed a technology to rapidly generate nonstandard peptide libraries.

Ariad Pharmaceuticals will eliminate about 20% of its workforce, mostly at its Cambridge, Mass., headquarters, as part of a strategic review. About 90 jobs will be cut, leaving the firm with 380 employees.

Roche has won FDA approval for an investigational test to screen blood donations for the Zika virus. The test, which uses nucleic acid extraction followed by PCR detection, will allow Puerto Rico to resume collecting blood donations, FDA says.

Emulate has raised $28 million in a round of financing to support development of its Organs-on-Chips. The technology allows drug researchers to use a silicon chip emulation of organs in lieu of cell culture- and animal-based experimentation.