Edgewater buys a pair of firms

Following on plans to purchase BASF’s inorganic specialties business, the private equity firm Edgewater Capital Partners is buying two specialty chemical businesses. From Ensign-Bickford Industries, it is getting DanChem Technologies, a Danville, Va.-based contract manufacturer that boasts the sector’s largest fleet of horizontal reactors, used in difficult and hazardous reactions. And an Edgewater-owned company, FAR Chemical, has acquired the acetylacetonate business of Mackenzie Chemicals. Mackenzie has been making acetylacetonates, used as catalysts, curing agents, and urethane crosslinkers, in Bush, La., since 1977.