Business Roundup

Ineos will pay BP $250 million for the pipeline connecting its refinery and petrochemical complex in Grangemouth, Scotland, to oil and gas fields under the North Sea. About 300 BP staffers operating the pipeline will transfer to Ineos.

Solvay has agreed to sell its polyolefin cross-linkable compounds business in Italy to the family-owned firm Finproject. The business, which mainly serves the plastic cable and pipe industries, generated sales of $87 million in 2016.

Lanxess plans to increase its capacity for producing red and black iron oxide pigments in Krefeld-Uerdingen, Germany, by almost 10% to 300,000 metric tons per year by 2019. The firm will also boost capacity for yellow pigments by 2,000 metric tons per year in Porto Feliz, Brazil.

Novozymes and Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health are joining to develop and commercialize probiotics as health-promoting alternatives to antibiotics for poultry hatcheries. As part of the agreement, Boehringer will market and distribute Novozymes’s FloraMax probiotic.

Solvay has won a patent infringement lawsuit in China against the Yantai-based firm Sunshow Specialty Chemical. The suit involved an ultraviolet stabilizer for thermoplastic olefins produced by Solvay’s Cytec Industries subsidiary.

Laurus Synthesis will provide chemistry development and manufacturing services for EpyGenix Therapeutics’ EPX-100, an epilepsy drug candidate. EPX-100 is scheduled to begin clinical trials to treat adolescents with Dravet syndrome, an orphan drug indication.

Azitra, a start-up that aims to harness the microbiome on the skin, has completed $2.9 million series A fundraising, bringing its total funding to $3.8 million. Azitra’s lead product is a strain of a skin bacterium that secretes therapeutic proteins into the skin.

Takeda Pharmaceutical and Finch Therapeutics will jointly develop FIN-524, a Finch-invented cultured bacteria for gastrointestinal diseases. Takeda will pay Finch $10 million up front plus potential milestone payments.