Business Roundup

Arkema has agreed to buy Agiplast, a specialist in the mechanical recycling of specialty polyamides and fluoropolymers. Agiplast has about $20 million in annual sales and 32 employees. It already works with Arkema at a plant in Italy.

BASF and the German energy firm RWE have proposed a 2 GW offshore wind farm that would supply green energy to BASF’s site in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The project would not need public subsidies but would require a suitable regulatory framework, the firms say.

Mitsubishi Chemical says it is taking steps to advance the chemical recycling of polymethyl methacrylate. The company is looking to build an acrylics recycling facility in Europe and a test facility in Osaka, Japan, with local partner Microwave Chemical.

Birla Carbon plans to produce carbon black, a tire ingredient, with carbonaceous raw materials from the UK firm Circtec. Circtec will get the materials from a tire pyrolysis plant it plans to build in the Netherlands.

Thomas Swan, a UK chemical maker, has joined the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester. Swan makes graphene nanoplatelets at its site in Consett, England.

Kula Bio has raised $10 million in seed funding to develop Kula-N, a beneficial bacteria that removes nitrogen from the air and stores it in soil. Boston-based Kula says Kula-N can replace synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.

Goldman Sachs has taken a minority stake in Aragen Life Sciences, an Indian contract research firm formerly known as GVK Biosciences, by acquiring shares held by ChrysCapital and others. Goldman recently invested $150 million in another Indian firm, Biocon Biologics.

Genentech has agreed to use Pieris Pharmaceuticals’ biologic drug delivery technology for therapies for respiratory and eye diseases. Genentech will pay the Boston-based firm $20 million up front and up to $1.4 billion in milestone payments.

Haya Therapeutics has raised about $20 million in seed financing to develop antisense oligonucleotide therapies that target long noncoding RNAs, which regulate genes. The Swiss start-up’s lead program will attempt to reverse fibrosis in nonobstructive hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a heart condition.