Business Roundup

Cronus Chemicals has secured a construction and air permit from the US Environmental Protection Agency to build an ammonia plant in Tuscola, Illinois. The plant will have annual production capacity for nearly 900,000 metric tons of ammonia for local agricultural markets.

Kemira is expanding coagulant capacity in Fredrikstad, Norway, by the end of 2025. Coagulants are used to reduce electric repulsion between particles in water treatment.

SI Group plans to close alkylphenol manufacturing in Singapore in 2025. The company opened the plant in 2006, but it says that the antioxidant value chain has since changed and that operating costs in the country have risen.

Northvolt will lay off 1,600 workers after announcing it will cancel plans for cathode production in Sweden. The company is also cutting jobs at a Swedish R&D lab investigating solid-state batteries.

Redwood Materials will work to collect and recycle used batteries from the BMW automotive group, which includes Mini and Rolls Royce. Redwood announced in May that it would recycle scrap from Ultium Cells battery plants in Ohio and Tennessee.

Resonac, a Japanese chemical company, has decided to sell its stake in Minaris Regenerative Medicine to Altaris, a US-based investment firm. Minaris is a contract development and manufacturing organization for cell and gene therapy products.

Ayrton Energy has raised $6.8 million in a seed funding round led by Clean Energy Ventures for a liquid hydrogen carrier that Ayrton says is twice as efficient as ammonia. The firm’s chemistry stores and releases hydrogen through reversible hydrogenation of a proprietary aromatic compound.

Lubrizol will double production capacity for its Solsperse brand disperants at its facility in Avon Lake, Ohio. The firm says the polymeric products are often used by coating and ink formulators to disperse pigments.