Stepan makes a pair of acquisitions

Stepan has acquired Invista’s aromatic polyester polyols business, which includes plants in Wilmington, North Carolina, and Vlissingen, the Netherlands, and generates about $100 million in annual sales. Stepan is already a major producer of aromatic polyester polyols, which are raw materials for rigid polyurethanes. Separately, Stepan has purchased a fermentation plant in Lake Providence, Louisiana, where Myriant idled a biobased succinic acid plant in 2017. Stepan plans to use the plant to make 20,000 metric tons per year of biobased surfactants. Stepan bought the NatSurFact rhamnolipid business from Logos Technologies last year.