Business Roundup

BASF is closing a plant that extracts gold and silver from electronic scrap at its site in Cinderford, England, by the end of 2014, eliminating 50 jobs. The company wants to focus on recycling platinum group metals from used catalytic converters.

Geo Specialty Chemicals of Ambler, Pa., is building a new current Good Manufacturing Practices plant in Hythe, England, to manufacture materials for silicone hydrogels, which are used to make contact lenses.

Sumitomo Chemical will close its 95,000-metric-ton-per-year liquid-phase caprolactam plant in Ehime, Japan, by the end of next year. The firm will continue to operate an 85,000-metric-ton vapor-phase caprolactam plant at the site.

Invista and LanzaTech are collaborating to develop gas fermentation technologies to convert CO₂ and H₂ into a range of industrial chemicals. The companies have been partnering since 2012 to make butadiene from industrial waste gases.

BASF has doubled capacity for its Hexamoll DINCH plasticizer at its Ludwigshafen, Germany, complex. The new plant brings total capacity for the nonphthalate plasticizer at the site to 200,000 metric tons per year.

Styrolution has started up a 40,000-metric-ton-per-year styrene-acrylonitrile plant in Gujarat, India. The polymer is used in applications such as appliances and cosmetics packaging.

Quintiles, a contract research firm specializing in clinical trial support, has agreed to acquire Encore Health Resources, a supplier of data analytics technology and services to the health care industry. Encore focuses on electronic health records.

Bayer has reached a definitive agreement to sell its interventional medical device business to Boston Scientific for $415 million. The business, which includes catheters for cardiology and vascular procedures, had sales of $120 million last year.

Merck & Co. has sold its microbial process development and manufacturing operations in Boulder, Colo., to KBI Biopharma, a contract manufacturer based in Durham, N.C. Under the deal, KBI will provide biologic drug production services to Merck as well as third parties.