Business Roundup

Mitsubishi Chemical is selling its polycrystalline alumina fibers business to the private equity firm Apollo Global Management for $760 million. The heat-resistant materials are used to protect ceramic catalysts in catalytic converters.

Shell Chemicals has agreed to buy pyrolysis oil from Pryme and use it to make chemicals at plants in the Netherlands and Germany. Pryme is building a pyrolysis plant in the Netherlands. When it opens in 2022 it will be able to convert 60,000 metric tons of plastic waste annually into the oil.

Mitsubishi Gas Chemical plans to build a second plant for m-xylenediamine at its complexin Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The aromatic monomer is added to epoxy coatings to impart anticorrosion properties.

Mitsubishi Chemical will work with the start-up Kebotix to find an environmentally friendly substitute for bisphenol A. Kebotix will use computational and machine-learning models as a discovery engine in what Mitsubishi describes as an initial project between the pair in the area of green chemistry.

Enko, an agrochemical start-up, has formed a partnership with Australia’s Nufarm to develop crop protection chemistries. Enko, which was founded in 2017 and raised $45 million last year, has similar deals with Bayer and Syngenta.

USALCO has purchased the water treatment business of Altivia. The firms say the deal advances Altivia’s focus on petrochemicals and specialty chemicals and USALCO’s geographic and product-type expansion in the water treatment market.

Pyran has won a $500,000 grant from the US National Science Foundation to help it scale up production of 1,5-pentanediol from renewable resources. The firm sees applications in markets including paints and adhesives.

Janssen will pay $125 million up front and up to $1.2 billion in milestone payments to Xencor to develop Xencor’s bispecific antibodies for blood cancers. The antibodies, plamotamab and XmAb, are designed to activate T cells through CD28, a costimulatory receptor.