Germany-based Evonik and Heraeus Precious Metals have announced that they are collaborating to expand their range of services for HPAPIs. They intend to build a fully integrated offering from the pre-clinical stage to commercial manufacturing, with streamlined transfer between small- and large-scale production between their respective sites.

Heraeus’s Pharmaceutical Ingredients business offers customised services for both earlier and later clinical phases and smaller to mid-volume HPAPI commercial products. It claims to be the world’s leading supplier of platinum-based HPAPIs.

Solenis has completed the previously announced acquisition of Diversey in an all-cash deal that gives Diversey an enterprise value of about $4.6 billion. The combined firm will have 71 manufacturing facilities, more than 15,000 employees and operations in over 130 countries. It will be majority-owned by Platinum Equity, with Bain Capital, which owned Diversey, keeping a minority stake.

Mitsubishi Chemical subsidiary Gelest has marked the groundbreaking for its latest production facility, the eighth in all, on a brownfield site at its headquarters in Morrisville, Pennsylvania. This will enhance its capabilities in applications such as microelectronics, medical devices, advanced thermal coatings and mobility, the firm stated.

Apical Oleochemical (Taixing), an RGE China operation, has celebrated on the completion of the initial phase of its ‘oleochemical industry integration project’ at Taixing in Jiangsu province. Construction for the initial phase began in July 2021 and was completed in March 2023, with production starting in June.

Matt Allen, product manager for elemental analysers at SciMed, explains why testing water for halogen species will be a serious consideration in the near future

Industry has come a long way towards sustainability in the last century. Gone are the days when processing plants would belch unfiltered arsenic and sulphurous fumes into the skies and pour black, smoking waste into rivers.

BASF has inaugurated the expansion of its Innovation Campus Shanghai. Originally opened in 2012 and twice updated through total investments of €280 million, the campus is BASF’s largest R&D site in Asia. The two new R&D buildings will house laboratories for:

* Process engineering, focusing on the formation and handling of solids and polymer recycling technologies

* Dispersions & resins, include robotic automation to test scrub resistance and tensile strength, and characterise coating film appearance

* Metal surface & industrial cleaning processes

International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG), the owner of WeylChem and many other European assets, has acquired two more operations. The acquisition of HCS Group in June followed on from that of Organica Feinchemie in May. Terms were not disclosed in either deal.