Business Roundup

Sasol expects to record an impairment charge of $6.5 billion for the second quarter, which will drive its quarterly results into the red. The charge relates primarily to a chemical project it has been starting up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, that is billions of dollars over budget.

Johnson Matthey is borrowing $104 million from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and $52 million from the German bank KfW IPEX to finance construction of a plant in Poland to produce cathode materials for lithium-ion auto batteries. The plant will be the first to make Matthey’s eLNO materials.

Nouryon plans to expand capacity for monochloroacetic acid—used to make pesticides, cosmetics, and medicines—by over 20% by year’s end at its plant in Delfzijl, the Netherlands. Nouryon is also studying how it can increase output of chlorine, a feedstock for the chemical.

Ineos and the UK’s Recycling Technologies will jointly adapt the latter’s technology to recycle polystyrene; it is currently used to chemically recycle mixed plastics. The firms say Recycling Technologies’ fluidized bed reactor holds promise to yield food-grade polystyrene.

Sai Life Sciences, a pharmaceutical services firm, has opened an R&D center in Hyderabad, India. The 7,700 m² facility features automation and data systems designed to coordinate with an adjacent pilot plant for efficient early-phase production of active pharmaceutical ingredients, according to Sai.

Kebotix, which combines artificial intelligence with machine learning for materials research, will open a second lab, at the C21 chemistry-focused accelerator in Woburn, Massachusetts. The start-up will occupy 93 m² of lab space as the second-largest of seven tenants at C21.

Atomwise, a start-up that uses artificial intelligence to aid drug discovery, has raised $123 million in series B financing. Atomwise says it has struck deals with several drug companies and more than 200 academic institutions.

Matterhorn Biosciences has launched with $30 million from Versant Ventures. The start-up is developing T-cell therapies that target a protein called MR1, which displays small-molecule metabolites on cancer cells.