Lyten buys Northvolt operations in Europe
The lithium-sulfur battery maker Lyten has agreed to buy the remaining Swedish and German assets and intellectual property of the defunct battery maker Northvolt, which produced lithium- and sodium-ion cells and systems. Lyten has purchased other assets from Northvolt, including a manufacturing site in California, since the latter declared bankruptcy in the US in November 2024; other parts of the business went to Scania and Volvo. In March of this year, Northvolt went bankrupt in its home country of Sweden as well. The firms did not disclose financial details, but Lyten says it is getting assets worth roughly $5 billion, including 16 GW h of manufacturing capacity already online, 15 GW h under construction in Quebec, and early-stage projects to expand to 100 GW h. Lyten says it plans to rehire a substantial portion of the European workers who lost their jobs. In California, Lyten converted the production line over to lithium-sulfur cells.-CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN
Pemex plan calls for petrochemical overhaul
Aiming to resuscitate the country's lethargic petrochemical sector, Mexico's state oil company, Pemex, has released its latest 10-year plan, which calls for $6.7 billion in investment in chemical products by 2035. Some $4.2 billion of this will be spent on rehabilitating its petrochemical complexes in Cangrejera and Morelos, Mexico. Pemex aims to grow its total production of ethylene derivatives such as polyethylene and ethylene oxide from 176,000 metric tons (t) per year today to 1 million t by 2035. Similarly, renovation of its Cosoleacaque, Mexico, ammonia plant and other improvements to that business will cost about $1.5 billion. This move will triple ammonia output to 957,000 t per year by 2028. The company will spend about $1 billion on increasing production of aromatics such as benzene, xylene, and toluene. Though Mexico is rich in oil and gas resources, underinvestment has made it a large importer of petrochemicals, particularly from the US.-ALEX TULLO
DIC to expand epoxy resins for electronics
DIC plans to build a new epoxy resins plant at its complex in Chiba, Japan. The specialty chemical company says the new capacity is meant to meet burgeoning demand for the material in the semiconductor sector. DIC will receive a grant of about $20 million from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry to build the plant. The new facility will expand DICs capacity at the complex by nearly two-thirds when it comes online in 2029.-ALEX TULLO
Cabot to buy Mexican carbon black plant
Cabot has agreed to acquire a carbon black plant in Altamira, Mexico, from the tire company Bridgestone for $70 million. The plant, which has been running since 2005, is near an existing Cabot facility. Carbon black is used as a rubber reinforcement for tires. Cabot says that the acquisition will enhance its global capabilities.-ALEX TULLO
EC wrong to classify TiO2 as a carcinogen, court says
The Court of Justice of the European Union, Europe's highest court, has found that the European Commission (EC) was wrong to classify titanium dioxide as a carcinogen. The court rejected an appeal by the EC and the French government to overturn a November 2022 ruling by the General Court that TiO2 is not a carcinogen. The Court of Justice upheld the General Court's finding that when classifying TiO2 as a carcinogen, the European Chemicals Agency "had failed to take into account all the relevant factors for the purposes of assessing the scientific information." The ruling means that existing labeling and documentation requirements for powdered TiO2 will no longer apply.-ALEX SCOTT
Esteve acquires US drug services firm Regis
Esteve, a drug services firm headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, has acquired Regis Technologies, a Chicago area contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), for an undisclosed amount. As part of the acquisition, Esteve will get all of Regis's assets, including manufacturing plants for both active pharmaceutical ingredients and chromatography products. Esteve says the move will help the company ramp up CDMO services relating to preclinical and commercial-stage drug production for its US clients.-AAYUSHI PRATAP
New York state to house world's biggest chlorhexidine plant
Garonit Pharmaceutical, a company with origins in India and headquartered in New Jersey, plans a $46.1 million investment to set up an 18,580 m2 pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in New Windsor, New York, the office of New York governor Kathy Hochul has announced. Garonit says the facility will be the world's largest plant for making chlorhexidine gluconate, a crucial ingredient in antiseptic, surgical disinfection, and infection prevention products used in hospitals. The state will pump $3.8 million into the project, which will create about 100 new jobs. Construction will begin in the first quarter of 2026, and operations are expected to start in January 2027.-AAYUSHI PRATAP
Wacker signs DNA technology pact
Wacker Chemie, a German chemical firm, has partnered with Gearbox Biosciences, a biotechnology company based in Estonia, to codevelop plasmid DNA manufacturing technologies. Wacker will bring to the partnership its expertise in good manufacturing practices in the production of biologics, while Gearbox will provide its antibiotic-free plasmid production platform. The collaboration aims to scale up the production of plasmid DNA, which is an essential raw material for making several biologic drugs. The companies will work on the project at Wacker's research and development site in Munich.-AAYUSHI PRATAP
OpenAI-backed antibody start-up raises $70 million
Chai Discovery, a start-up using artificial intelligence tools to design new antibodies, has raised $70 million in a series A funding round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Menlo Ventures. Another backer is OpenAI, the tech company behind ChatGPT. Founded last year by veterans of OpenAI, Stripe, and Absci, Chai Discovery aims to predict how chemicals interact inside the body and, in turn, find target sites to which new antibodies can effectively bind. The start-up closed a $30 million seed round less than 1 year ago.-ROWAN WALRATH
Messenger RNA start-up closes $153 million financing
Strand Therapeutics, a biotechnology firm aiming to create messenger RNA (mRNA) medicines for various cancers, has raised $153 million in a series B round led by Kinnevik with backing from several Big Pharma firms, including Regeneron, Amgen, and Eli Lilly and Company. The Boston-based start-up says it will put the funds toward clinical trials of its programmable mRNA therapies. One, STX-001, is being tested in a Phase 1 study for its ability to treat solid tumors. The drug candidate encodes the proinflammatory cytokine interleukin-12 with the goal of "reprogramming" the tumor environment to stimulate immune cells to attack cancerous ones.-ROWAN WALRATH
Bayer and Kumquat to collaborate on KRAS
The German pharma giant Bayer has signed a collaboration with Kumquat Biosciences for the firm's small-molecule KRAS G12D inhibitor. The deal may be worth up to $1.3 billion in upfront payments and milestones. For that cash, Bayer gets a worldwide license for Kumquat's inhibitor, which recently got US Food and Drug Administration clearance as an investigational new drug. Various KRAS mutations can drive cancer, but there are not yet any approved drugs that target the G12D mutation, which is found in 37% of cases of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common form of pancreatic cancer.-LAURA HOWES