According to a lifecycle assessment carried out by an independent consultant and verified by a panel of three that was presented at the CESIO World Surfactant Congress in Rome on 5-7 June, the carbon footprint of Cepsa Química’s NextLab facility is 80% lower than that of a traditional linear alkyl benzene (LAB) facility. Greenhouse gas savings are put at 1,320 kg CO2/tonne of LAB produced.
ECHA has published its fifth triennial report on the use of alternatives to testing on animals for REACH. Based on data from 12,439 registered substances up until 31 July 2022, it concluded that progress is being made and alternatives are widely used when assessing the safety of chemical substances.
In the space of a few weeks, distributor Azelis has acquired Sirius International, a distributor of speciality chemicals in the Benelux market, and Gillco Ingredients, a speciality ingredients provider in the US. Terms were not disclosed in either case.
Led by founder and CEO Leo Verboeket, Sirus is active in environmentally friendly chemicals for the detergent, personal care and water treatment markets in Europe. Azelis said this complements its lateral value chain in home care and industrial cleaning.
Japan’s DIC Corporation has acquired PCAS Canada from PCAS, a legacy subsidiary of Seqens, for an enterprise value of €82 million, and has renamed it Innovation DIC Chimitroniques. This follows agreement by both boards and the workers’ council.
PCAS Canada has a facility near Montreal producing photoresists for semiconductor photolithography, an area in which DIC expects substantial growth. DIC will combine these with its own syntheis technologies and will continue to invest in the site.
Julian Vance Daniel, director at Vessco Engineering, examines how the processes and procedures that govern engineering and manufacturing in the stringent civil nuclear sector could equally apply to the chemical sector
As digitisation, AI and information exchange speed up, so too do the learnings from one industry to another. Fabrication plays a crucial role in the chemical manufacturing industry and encompasses various processes involved in transforming raw materials into final products with specific characteristics.
Italian CDMO Olon has announced the start of a construction on a €22 million facility for the production of ultra-potent compounds. These are aimed for use mainly as payloads and payload-linkers for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) at its site at Rodano, near Milan. The facility will reach containment OEB Level 6, with a target occupational exposure level (OEL) of 10 ng/m3.
BASF has started up a new supercomputer at its Ludwigshafen verbund site in Germany. Like its predecessor, the new machine will be called Quriosity but will have three petaflops of computing power compared to 1.75. It will also be the largest supercomputer used in industrial chemical research.
