Business Roundup

W. R. Grace’s board has elected Hudson La Force as president and CEO. La Force, who joined Grace in 2008 as chief financial officer, replaces CEO Fred Festa, who led Grace for 15 years and is now nonexecutive chairman.

DuPont will spend $80 million to build a manufacturing plant in Zhangjiagang, China. The plant will compound engineering polymers and make lubricants, specialty silicones, and automotive adhesives.

Pacific Industrial Development will spend $17.2 million on a 3,700-m2 technology center at its Ann Arbor, Mich., site. The investment, along with a $400,000 state grant, will create 50 new jobs and enlarge its catalyst support and electronic material businesses, the firm says.

Kraton says it expects to completely restart its Panama City, Fla., pine chemicals facility by mid-first-quarter 2019. The facility was damaged in October by Hurricane Michael.

Arkema will fund a chair for five years at École Polytechnique with the aim of researching polymeric materials, thermoplastic composites, and adhesives. Arkema wants the research to have an industrial focus and explore relationships between processes, structures, and properties.

Ardena, a Belgian contract development and manufacturing organization, has opened a new headquarters in Ghent. Following four acquisitions, the firm operates six sites in Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Latvia.

Nestlé Health Science has increased its stake in Aimmune Therapeutics, a food allergy treatment developer, by $98 million, bringing its investment to $298 million and giving it a 19% stake in the firm. Aimmune says the cash will help it launch its lead candidate, a peanut allergy treatment that has completed Phase III studies.

Evox Therapeutics has received $850,000 from the charity Duchenne UK to explore whether lipid vesicles called exosomes can be used to deliver variants of dystrophin, the missing or malfunctioning protein in people with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The partners will explore Evox’s therapies in preclinical models.