Business Roundup

H.B. Fuller has agreed to sell its surfactants, thickeners, and dispersants business in Dalton, Georgia, to Tiarco for $71 million. Fuller obtained the business when it acquired Royal Adhesives for $1.6 billion in 2017.

DuPont is investing in BioMe Oxford, a start-up that developed BioCapture, an orally delivered capsule that can sample gut bacteria in humans and other animals. BioCapture will allow a deeper understanding of the impact that probiotics and other ingredients have on the microbiome, DuPont says.

Koppers will close its Follansbee, West Virginia, facility, where until recently it refined naphthalene. The company has consolidated naphthalene refining at its site in Stickney, Illinois.

Archroma says the Vietnamese textile maker Tuong Long will switch to its aniline-free indigo dye to make denim. Unlike traditional indigo, Archroma says, the Denisol brand indigo contains no detectable residual aniline, an aquatic toxin.

Daicel will build a 1,3-butylene glycol plant at its Aboshi site in Himeji-shi, Japan. Daicel says demand for the ingredient, also known as 1,3-butanediol, is growing in cosmetic applications.

Waters Corp. has formed a partnership with Medicines Discovery Catapult, a UK facility intended to accelerate drug discovery. Through the partnership, small drug-discovery firms will gain precommercial access to new Waters mass spectrometry technology.

Evotec will receive a $23.8 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to discover new treatment regimens for tuberculosis. The foundation wants to reduce the current regimen of administering four drugs for a minimum of 6 months.

Artizan Biosciences, a Yale University spin-off, has closed its first formal round of financing, bringing its total fundraising to $12 million. Artizan’s technology platform allows it to identify bacteria that predispose people to inflammatory bowel disease.