Business Roundup

Invista will sell its Asia-Pacific nylon 6 fiber operations, which have $50 million in annual sales, to Italy’s Aquafil. In November, Invista agreed to sell a portfolio of textile fibers and intermediates to the Chinese textile and apparel maker Shandong Ruyi Investment Holding.

Mint Innovation, a metal recovery firm based in New Zealand, has partnered with Remarkit, an e-waste handler and fellow kiwi company, on a plant to demonstrate its technology. The facility will recover metal from up to 200 metric tons of printed circuit boards per year using chemical and microbial processing.

Kraton is expanding capacity for Sylvatraxx terpene and polyterpene tire tread additives by 20% at its plant in Niort, France. The additives improve wet grip and reduce rolling resistance.

Johnson Matthey has scaled up production of ester hydrogenation catalysts using technology licensed from GreenCentre Canada. The technology originated in the lab of chemist Dmitri Gusev of Wilfrid Laurier University.

Agrinos, a crop nutrition start-up, has raised $15 million in its first round of funding from Manor Investment, Havfonn, and EuroChem. The funds will be used to further develop microbe-based fertilizers and stimulants.

Thermo Fisher Scientific has launched the Axiom Microbiome Array to detect archaea, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, and viruses in human and nonhuman samples. Developed with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the array incorporates sequences for over 12,000 species.

Lonza has struck a deal to exclusively provide ­biologic drug development and production services to Denali Therapeutics. Denali focuses on drugs that can cross the blood-brain barrier to treat neurodegenerative diseases.

Bristol-Myers Squibb has formed a research collaboration with San Diego-based Sirenas, which uses computational approaches to mine the microbiome for small-molecule drug candidates. Sirenas’s pipeline is focused on the immune system. One of its cofounders is Scripps Research Institute chemist Phil Baran.