Business Roundup

Daesung Industrial Gases is being sold by a consortium led by Goldman Sachs to MBK Partners, which calls itself the largest independent private equity firm in Asia. The purchase price for Daesung, one of South Korea’s largest industrial gases firms, was about $1.8 billion.

DuPont will stop making Kevlar p-aramid fiber in Charleston, S.C., and consolidate production in Richmond, Va. About 115 employees will be affected by the shutdown. DuPont opened the Charleston plant in 2011 at a cost of $500 million.

Bayer raised $1.6 billion by reducing its stake in spin-off Covestro to 53%. Bayer will still consolidate Covestro’s results with its own, but the move cuts Bayer’s debt as it gets ready to close the purchase of Monsanto for $66 billion.

Fujifilm will create a new business division focused on contract manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals and small-molecule pharmaceuticals. The new unit, expected to achieve sales of $885 million by 2024, will mostly consist of two plants in the U.S. and the U.K. that use mammalian cells and microbes to produce biopharmaceuticals.

Koch Industries’ Invista unit is exploring “strategic alternatives” for its apparel and advanced textiles fiber business. Invista says if it doesn’t find a buyer, “we will gladly hold the business and continue to invest for the future.”

Electrochaea, a Munich-based cleantech start-up, says it has successfully secured a European Union patent for a strain of the microorganism Methanothermobacter thermautotrophicus, which converts hydrogen and CO₂ into methane. The firm recently validated its technology at a facility in Denmark.

Arcinova, a U.K.-based R&D services provider for the pharmaceutical sector, says it has received a $922,000 loan that will enable it to increase its workforce of 63 to 94 employees. Owner Arc Trinova bought the business and site in Alnwick, England, from Covance in 2015.

Exonics Therapeutics, a newly formed biotechnology firm, received $5 million in seed financing from the nonprofit CureDuchenne. Exonics is focused on developing gene-editing technologies such as CRISPR/Cas9 to correct mutations causing Duchenne muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases.