Business Roundup

Wacker Chemie plans to invest more than $100 million to expand capacity for liquid silicone rubber at several sites around the world. The company is also looking to double silicon capacity in Norway with a new furnace.

Biosynth Carbosynth has acquired Aalto Bio Reagents, an Irish maker of biological raw materials for the diagnostics industry. Biosynth also recently acquired Vivitide, a specialist in making peptides and antibodies.

Valmet is working with Circa Group to develop production processes for biobased solvents, including Cyrene (dihydrolevoglucosenone). Valmet will supply machinery for a planned small-scale plant in France and will work with Circa to design larger plants in the future.

ADM is partnering with Good Meat to optimize the nutrients used to feed cell-grown meat. This is ADM’s first move into the cellular meat industry. Good Meat’s chicken is already commercially available in Singapore.

Mangrove Lithium has raised $12 million to launch a commercial-scale plant that will produce lithium hydroxide and carbonate for batteries. The company hopes its plant will ease supply chain problems for customers in the Western hemisphere.

Piramal Pharma Solutions has opened an active pharmaceutical ingredient plant in Aurora, Ontario. The drug services firm says the plant, which includes two new reactor suites, is part of a $23 million investment program at the site.

Solidia Technologies has won a $2.1 million grant from the US Department of Energy to develop and test its carbon dioxide–consuming concrete technology. Solidia captures flue-gas CO₂ and uses it to synthesize cementitious materials that can replace fly ash or blast furnace slag in concrete.

Pleno has emerged from stealth with $15 million in financing. The company combines DNA, RNA, methylation, and proteomic information for high-throughput drug target detection. Its platform uses data-processing techniques from the telecommunications industry.