Business Roundup

Carbios and Indorama Ventures are moving forward with plans to build a polyethylene terephthalate recycling plant in France that will use Carbios’s enzymatic technology to break down the polymer into its raw materials. The plant will cost about $250 million to construct.

ExxonMobil has signed an agreement to capture, transport, and store up to 800,000 metric tons (t) per year of carbon dioxide from the steelmaker Nucor’s site in Convent, Louisiana. The energy company has signed agreements to capture and store a total of 5 million t from firms including Linde and CF industries.

Element Solutions will pay $185 million to buy out its distribution agreement with Entegris for Element’s line of electrochemical deposition products serving semiconductor manufacturing. Element has also purchased the nano-copper specialist Kuprion.

Servier reported positive Phase 3 clinical results for its glioma treatment, vorasidenib. The investigational drug, an oral dual inhibitor of mutant isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 and 2 enzymes, demonstrably prolonged progression-free survival and delayed the need for intervention among a trial cohort of 331 patients.

Obeikan Investment Group and European Lithium are forming a joint venture to build a lithium hydroxide refinery in Saudi Arabia. The companies hope to use ore from European Lithium’s mine in Austria.

Denka plans to use a process developed by Transform Materials that employs a microwave plasma reactor to produce acetylene with no carbon dioxide emissions. Denka will install demonstration equipment using the technology at a site in Japan and hopes to scale it up.

Ecolab plans to invest more than $190 million to expand its Purolite business by building a facility in Landenberg, Pennsylvania, that makes agarose-based chromatography resins for purifying biologic drugs. The project includes new clean room facilities and laboratories.

Alkeus Pharmaceuticals has raised $150 million in a series B funding round. The company will use the money to seek regulatory approval of its lead candidate, gildeuretinol (ALK-001), a deuterated form of vitamin A. The drug is an investigational treatment for Stargardt disease, a genetic blindness condition that stems from the accelerated dimerization of vitamin A in the eye.