Business Roundup

Innospec is increasing capacity for dried anionic surfactants at its plant in Saint-Mihiel, France. The products are used in household detergents. Innospec bought Huntsman Corp.’s European surfactants business earlier this year.

Amyris, a biobased chemicals manufacturer, completed a reverse stock split to convert every 15 shares of the company to one share. On June 2, the trading day before the announcement, Amyris’s stock price was a mere 22 cents. The move is intended to increase the stock price to maintain the company’s listing on the NASDAQ Global Select Market.

Lion Elastomers has bought East West Copolymer’s Baton Rouge, La., plant out of bankruptcy. The plant has been making styrene-butadiene rubber since the U.S. government built it in 1943 as part of the war effort. Lion will decommission it and evaluate the site’s future.

Axalta Coating Systems has completed its $420 million purchase of Valspar’s industrial wood coatings business. The business is being sold to win antitrust approval for Sherwin-Williams’s purchase of Valspar.

NatureWorks has licensed a chemical processing technology for the production of d-lactic acid from Plaxica, a spin-off from Imperial College London. NatureWorks says the low-cost route will help it make a range of performance polymers based on polylactic acid.

Arysta LifeScience, an agricultural chemical business, has acquired the assets of the South African firm Verios Agro. Verios makes microbial and micronutrient-based biostimulants and plant nutrition products.

Aileron Therapeutics, a biotech firm devoted to developing stapled peptide therapeutics, has filed paperwork to go public. The firm hopes to raise $69 million to support the clinical development of its lead compound, ALRN-6924, now in Phase I studies in cancer.

Innate Pharma has paid Novo Nordisk $45 million in stock and cash for the rights to IPH5401, an anti-C5aR antibody that is expected to begin clinical trials in cancer next year. Triggering C5aR causes the accumulation of myeloid-derived suppressor cells and neutrophils in the tumor microenvironment.