Business Roundup

Stepan has agreed to purchase a BASF oleochemical surfactant facility in Ecatepec, Mexico, for an undisclosed sum. The plant has 50,000 metric tons of annual capacity.

Evonik Industries has opened a research center in Darmstadt, Germany to develop innovations for the lubricant market. Some 15–20% of global energy is consumed just to overcome friction, so there’s a great need for products to reduce that energy loss, the firm says.

Neste, the Finnish oil firm, says it is investing “a large amount of resources” to develop a process that converts waste plastics into a substitute for crude oil. “The transition to sustainable lifestyles cannot be held back,” says CEO Matti Lievonen.

BASF and Sumitomo Chemical are collaborating on a new fungicide, which was discovered by Sumitomo. The companies will pursue regulatory applications next year and believe that the product will be used for diseases resistant to current fungicides.

FMC plans to sell its omega-3 fatty acid business. Originally acquired in 2013 from Norway’s Trygg Pharma for $345 million, the fatty acid business was not included in FMC’s sale of its health and nutrition business to DuPont in March.

Olon, a contract manufacturer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) based in Milan, has acquired the chemical research and manufacturing division of contract research services firm Ricerca Biosciences, based in Concord, Ohio. The deal gives Olon research and manufacturing facilities in the U.S.

Novartis, the European Investment Fund, and Verily, formerly Google Life Sciences, are among the investors in the $300 million Medicxi Growth fund. The U.K.- and Switzerland-based fund will invest in late-stage European life sciences start-ups that often do not have the same access to local financial support as do their U.S.-based counterparts, backers say.

Carma Therapeutics has secured an initial round of financing, led by AbbVie Ventures and HealthCap, to support its immuno-oncology portfolio. Carma, which in 2016 was spun out of the labs of University of Pennsylvania oncologist Saar Gill, will use the money primarily to develop CARMA-0508, an adoptive cellular immunotherapy for solid tumors that have metastasized.