Business Roundup

Mitsubishi Gas Chemical is chartering a methanol carrier with Mitsui O.S.K. that can run on methanol or conventional heavy fuel oil. When used as a fuel, methanol can reduce sulfur oxide emissions by 99% compared with conventional marine fuels, the company says.

Yara plans to build a production facility at its site near Yorkshire, England, for specialty crop nutrition products and biostimulants that increase crop yield and quality. Yara’s sales of those products have increased about 400% in the last 2 decades.

India Oil has awarded the contract for a new maleic anhydride plant to the engineering firm McDermott. The plant will also make tetrahydrofuran and butanediol.

Foremark Performance Chemicals has acquired NexGen Chemical Technologies, a provider of alternative technologies for sweetening natural gas. Sweetening is the process of removing hydrogen sulfide from natural gas, usually with a chemical known as MEA triazine. 

Evolva has hired a manufacturer to produce its fermentation-derived vanillin. The company claims that the supply of its product is more stable than that of plant-based vanillin and also avoids petrochemical processes used to make synthetic vanillin.

Appied Adhesives has purchased Heigl Adhesives. Both of the industrial and custom adhesives firms are based in the suburbs of Minnesota’s Twin Cities.

Biosynth, a Swiss research chemical supplier, has acquired Cambridge Research Biochemicals, a maker of peptide and antibody products. Biosynth was created in recent years through the combination of Biosynth Carbosynth, Vivitide, and Pepscan.

Smartbax has closed a seed financing round of $1.3 million to advance its pipeline of small-molecule antibiotics through preclinical studies. The German company aims to develop antibiotics against multidrug-resistant bacteria by simultaneously targeting several pathways to impede bacterial metabolism and trigger their self-destruction.