Business Roundup

Sun Chemical and its parent company DIC have acquired the high-purity iron oxides business of Cathay Industries in Valparaiso, Ind. Sun says the business will add to its line of colors and effects for the cosmetics industry.

Arsenal Capital Partners has sold Inhance Technologies to Aurora Capital Partners for an undisclosed sum. Inhance offers fluorine-based barrier and surface modification technology for plastics and composites.

Saudi Aramco says it is interested in acquiring a stake in SABIC, a fellow Saudi Arabian firm that is the world’s fourth-largest chemical maker. Aramco says the move would be consistent with its desire to move more downstream beyond oil and gas.

Nutrien, the fertilizer maker formed through the merger of Agrium and PotashCorp, has acquired Waypoint Analytical. Nutrien calls Waypoint the largest agricultural lab in the U.S. and among the top 25 U.S. environmental labs.

Borealis, an Austrian polymers maker, has agreed to acquire the Austrian plastics recycling firm Ecoplast Kunststoffrecycling. Ecoplast upgrades about 35,000 metric tons per year of postconsumer polyethylene.

Bruker has acquired JPK Instruments, a German provider of microscopy instruments with about $12 million in annual sales. Bruker says JPK complements the microscopy business it has built up in recent years.

Neuraly, a Germantown, Md.-based start-up, has raised $36 million in series A financing to test its hypothesis that glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor activators, used to treat type 2 diabetes, could protect brain cells from inflammation. The company plans to begin a Phase I clinical trial this year.

Pliant Therapeutics has raised $62 million in a series B funding round. The South San Francisco-based biotech firm launched in 2016 with $45 million to treat fibrotic disorders by inhibiting integrins with small molecules.