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JUBILANT WILL ACQUIRE
CONTRACT FIRM DRAXIS
India’s Jubilant Organosys has agreed to
acquire Draxis Health, a Canadian company
that provides contract manufacturing
of finished drugs and makes radiopharmaceuticals.
The purchase price, about
$255 million, represents a 41.2% premium
over Draxis’ stock price before it began to
rise last month. Jubilant is already a large
provider of custom research and manufacturing
services. Chairman Shyam S. Bhartia
says the purchase of Draxis will add to his
company’s contract manufacturing capabilities
and take it into the radiopharmaceuticals
business.
LONZA WILL BOOST
NIACIN CAPACITY
Lonza will increase its production capacity
for the B-3 vitamins niacin (shown) and niacinamide
by more than 40% with a threeyear,
$50 million project. The Swiss company
says it will build
N
O
OH
a 15,000-metric-tonper-year
facility at one
of its three nicotinate
manufacturing sites
in Visp, Switzerland,
and in Guangzhou and
Nansha, China. The company says the new
facility will take advantage of “very promising
innovations in technology and process
development that are currently in pilot
operations.”
ROHM AND HAAS BUYS,
SELLS IN ELECTRONICS
Rohm and Haas has acquired South Korea’s
Gracel Display for $40 million. The eightyear-old
firm has about 55 employees who
develop and manufacture organic lightemitting
diode materials. Rohm and Haas
says it has invested more than $270 million
over the past 12 months to build a flatpanel
display technologies business. Separately,
the Philadelphia-based company has
agreed to sell its 40% stake in South Korea’s
UP Chemical for $112 million to a group of
South Korean investors. UP is a specialist
in dynamic random-access memory and
high-k gate dielectric precursor technology
used to make semiconductors. Rohm
and Haas bought its stake in UP in 1998 for
$3.5 million. It continues to be involved in
BUSINESS CONCENTRATES
EUROPEAN DRUGMAKERS
LOOK EAST FOR ACTIVES
Two Europe-based drug companies have struck agreements with Asian
firms with the goal of lowering their costs for active pharmaceutical ingredients
(APIs). Switzerland’s Nycomed has signed a deal with India’s Zydus
Cadila under which it will transfer all API production from its facilities in
Singen, Germany, and Linz, Austria, to Cadila plants in India by 2011. About
200 jobs out of 1,400 at the two sites may be affected. “API production
is under increasing cost pressure from countries with lower wages,” says
Barthold Piening, Nycomed’s executive vice president for operations. “We
will focus on the [finished] pharmaceutical production because this is an
area for future innovation.” Meanwhile, Actavis, the Icelandic generic drug
company, has acquired a 90% stake in China’s Zhejiang Chiral Medicine
Chemicals for an undisclosed sum. Actavis says the purchase of the sixyear-old
firm is part of its strategy of getting direct access to low-cost API
manufacturing. Actavis earlier established R&D and API facilities in India.
the high-k field through an amidinate compound
licensing agreement signed last year
with Harvard University.
CHLORINE LEAK
SETTLEMENT REACHED
Railroad operator Norfolk Southern has
agreed to a confidential settlement of a
lawsuit brought by Avondale Mills. The
textile firm shut its operations in July
2006, blaming its failure on a January
2005 Norfolk Southern train derailment
and chlorine spill that wrecked its denim
plant in Graniteville, S.C. The crash and
leak killed nine people and injured more
than 250 others (C&EN, Jan. 17, 2005, page
11). Norfolk Southern previously settled
class-action suits brought by Graniteville
residents covering personal injuries and
property damage.
ANOTHER EXPANSION
SET FOR ABU DHABI
Borouge, a joint venture between Austrian
polyolefins maker Borealis and Abu Dhabi
National Oil Co., is studying another expansion
of its petrochemical complex in
Ruwais, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
The partnership is considering adding 2.5
million metric tons of polyolefin capacity,
including a new low-density polyethylene
plant, by 2014. The joint venture currently
has 600,000 metric tons of polyethylene
capacity. A project to add 2 million metric
WWW.CEN-ONLINE.ORG 25 APRIL 14, 2008
tons of polyethylene and polypropylene
capacity is already under construction and
is expected to be completed at the site by
2010. Borealis and one of its owners, International
Petroleum Investment, revealed
plans last month for a separate, massive
chemical complex to be built in Abu Dhabi
by 2013.
DUPONT OPENS
STORM SHELTER
TEST FACILITY
DuPont has opened its first storm shelter
test facility at the Chestnut Run research
site in Wilmington, Del. The firm says it
will use the multi-
million-dollar
facility to test different
materials
for the DuPont
StormRoom, which
is reinforced with
its high-strength
aramid fiber Kevlar.
The room can serve
as a laundry or powder
room when not
needed to protect
people during hurricanes
and tornadoes.
Separately,
DuPont just signed
an agreement to
DUPONT
provide the shelters for sale to new-home
buyers in 30 states through national homebuilding
franchise Epcon Communities.