It had appeared that chemical merger and acquisition activity, sluggish for years, was starting to turn the corner. In June, Olin and Huntsman announced a merger of equals meant to combine Olin’s chlorine production with Huntsman’s chlorine derivatives. Then, less than a year after spinning off from Honeywell, Solstice Advanced Materials signed a deal to acquire Element Solutions in a stock and cash deal meant to take advantage of the boom in electronic materials. And just last month, it emerged that LyondellBasell Industries and ExxonMobil are both interested in acquiring Shell’s US chemical unit.
Now the Solstice deal has been canceled (see below) because of a cool response from shareholders. The Olin-Huntsman combination got shareholder approval—but after a lukewarm reception from Wall Street. And Woodside Energy recently said it is evaluating strategic options for an ammonia plant it just spent more than $2 billion to buy.
Perhaps it was a false spring and chemical M&A is ducking back into its hole after seeing its shadow.
Send any questions, comments, or tips to me, senior correspondent Alex Tullo, at [email protected].
Top stories from C&EN
A crew member on the Japanese deep-sea drilling vessel Chikyū manages a pipe bringing up mud that contains rare earths. Credit:
Cross-Ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program/Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology
Business in brief
Solstice, Element terminate proposed merger
The combination of Solstice Advanced Materials and Element Solutions would have created a large supplier of materials used in electronics manufacturing. Credit:
Shutterstock
Citing shareholder opposition, the specialty chemical maker Solstice Advanced Materials and the chemical formulator Element Solutions have canceled their proposed $14.5 billion merger. The transaction, announced July 6, was structured as a Solstice cash-and-stock acquisition of Element. The deal would have rounded out Solstice’s electronic materials with Element’s broad offering in the sector. The combined company would have had $6.8 billion in sales. But Solstice shareholders immediately balked at the deal. The firm’s share price declined from $80.19 on the eve of the deal announcement to $68.05 the next day, after the transaction was announced. “Following conversations with our shareholders and discussions between the parties, both Boards unanimously believe that it is in the best interests of our respective shareholders, employees and customers to terminate the merger agreement,” Solstice chairman Rajeev Gautam says in a statement. Neither company will be required to pay a fee for deal termination.
—Alex Tullo
OCP and CHS to build phosphate fertilizer plant in Louisiana
OCP North America, a subsidiary of the Moroccan phosphate maker OCP, and the farmer cooperative CHS plan to build a $450 million phosphate fertilizer plant in Waggaman, Louisiana. The firms say in their announcement that the plant, which will have 1 million metric tons of annual fertilizer capacity, will be the first new phosphate fertilizer plant constructed in the US since 1984. The firms also say the new plant could “reduce US dependency on imported phosphate-based fertilizer by more than 48%.” But the plant itself will use imported phosphoric acid as its feedstock, provided by OCP. The acid will be reacted with ammonia in Louisiana to make mono- and diammonium phosphate.
—Alex Tullo
Pentagon to sign offtake agreement for Brazil rare earth plant
The US military intends to buy $1.55 billion of rare earth elements through offtake agreements and purchase commitments with the Brazilian company Serra Verde, which is ramping up production at its Pela Ema Project in the Brazilian state of Goiás. The offtake deal includes carbonates of dysprosium, terbium, neodymium, and praseodymium, elements that are used in magnets and high-temperature alloys. The site uses a centralized mining and extraction process that is purported to be more environmentally friendly than the open hillside injection methods employed by the dominant rare earth providers, most of which are based in or controlled by China. The US previously arranged a $565 million loan to help Serra Verde scale up in Goiás as part of a multiagency initiative to develop critical material supply chains that are not dependent on China. USA Rare Earth is in the process of acquiring Serra Verde for $2.8 billion. At the end of August, the same Pentagon office made a $35.6 million equity investment into Trilogy Metals, a US firm developing copper, cobalt, and germanium sources in Alaska, and increased its investment in the domestic alumina supplier Atlantic Alumina from $300 million to $400 million.
—Craig Bettenhausen
Cyclic raises $75 million for rare earth recycling
The rare earth element recycler Cyclic Materials says it has completed a $75 million funding round that brings its total equity funding to $327 million. The firm, which was founded in 2021, says it will use the funds to build a rare earth recycling campus in South Carolina. It expects to open a similar but smaller facility in Mesa, Arizona, later this year. In its process, Cyclic mechanically separates rare earth magnets from end-of-life products. It then uses hydrometallurgical refining to recover mixed rare earth oxides. Metallization and alloying steps yield magnet ingredients like samarium, dysprosium, and neodymium-praseodymium. The company says that less than 1% of rare earth elements are recycled today.
—Michael McCoy
Evonik to spend $108 million on Vancouver lipids plant
Two scientists work in a clean room at Evonik Industries’ operations in Vancouver, British Columbia, where the company is building new lipids production. Credit:
Evonik Industries
Evonik Industries says it will invest $108 million to expand lipid-based drug manufacturing at its facility in Vancouver, British Columbia. The project has Canadian federal support of up to $49 million and is in line with Evonik’s ongoing focus on lipids, demand for which has soared with the development of messenger RNA vaccines. The lipid nanoparticle market alone is estimated to reach $2.7 billion by 2034, according to a report from Fortune Business Insights. The Vancouver expansion will triple Evonik’s current manufacturing capability for advanced pharmaceutical products in the city and add quality control and microbiological testing capacity. Mélanie Joly, Canada’s minister of industry and minister responsible for economic development for Quebec regions, says the investment is a boost for British Columbia’s fast-growing life sciences sector. “The government of Canada is proud to support Evonik’s goals, which will help position Canada at the forefront of next-generation vaccines and medicines,” Joly says in a statement. Drug product manufacturing at the new site is expected to start by the end of 2029.
—Vanessa Zainzinger, special to C&EN
Yara receives allegation that ammonia contract was improperly terminated
Yara may be facing a complication with its proposed acquisition of Gulf Coast Ammonia. In July, the Norwegian fertilizer maker agreed to purchase the new facility, which has 1.3 million metric tons (t) of capacity, for $1.3 billion. But on Aug. 21, Yara received a request for arbitration from a party alleging that it has suffered $2 billion in damages from the alleged wrongful termination of an ammonia offtake agreement. Yara didn’t name the party, but the Moroccan phosphate fertilizer maker OCP had a contract from the new facility for 800,000 t per year of ammonia, which was likely to be used to make mono- and diammonium phosphate. Yara acknowledged the contract in a recent conference call with investors. “The plant was offered for sale without any current offtake in place,” Yara Chief Financial Officer Magnus Krogh Ankarstrand said. In a new statement, Yara says that Gulf Coast Ammonia rejects the claims and that Yara “remains committed to completing the acquisition.”
—Alex Tullo
Syensqo wins preliminary patent infringement ruling against Chinese firms
A judge at the US International Trade Commission has issued a preliminary ruling in favor of patent infringement claims made by the specialty chemical maker Syensqo against four Chinese fluorochemical producers: the Sinochem subsidiary Lantian, Hubei Fluorine New Materials, Zhejiang Fluorine Chemical New Material, and Zhejiang Juhua. The patent at issue covers the production and use of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and related formulations, which Sysenqo sells under the Solef brand for use as separators and binders in lithium-ion batteries. Synesqo is seeking a permanent ban on the import and marketing of the other firms’ versions of the PVDF materials.
—Craig Bettenhausen
Sudarshan bags Clariant aluminum dye plant
The Indian pigment producer Sudarshan Chemical Industries has agreed to acquire Clariant’s aluminum dyes facility in Muttenz, Switzerland. The Muttenz plant already manufactures Sudarshan’s aluminum dyes portfolio, but the supply arrangement was scheduled to end. The pigment maker says owning the facility will save it from transferring the process to another site and secure production for the long term. “We have depended on this site for years. Now we own it. That means we control the process, the capacity, and we can plan the next generation of these products on our own timetable,” Sudarshan managing director Rajesh Rathi says in a statement. The sale is set to be completed in early January and keep the existing workforce intact.
—Vanessa Zainzinger, special to C&EN
Quote of the week
“I view AI as an enabler . . . if you just let loose an enabler across your business, you’re going to have challenges.”
More funding for Ebola vaccines
The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) will provide $16.5 million to Egypt’s Minapharm Pharmaceuticals to advance an Ebola vaccine candidate into clinical trials. The candidate was developed by ProBioGen, a Berlin-based subsidiary of Minapharm. It’s specifically designed to target the Bundibugyo virus, the Ebola relative responsible for the current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The funds from CEPI support a Phase 1 clinical trial expected to take place in Africa, but no start date has been provided. Minapharm’s vaccine candidate is the latest of five Bundibugyo-specific vaccines that CEPI has allocated funds to; others include vaccine candidates developed by IAVI (International AIDS Vaccine Initiative), Moderna, the University of Oxford, and Public Health Vaccines. Human trials have already begun on Moderna and Oxford’s candidates.
—Max Barnhart
FDA approves Revolution Medicines’ pancreatic cancer drug
In a major win in the fight against notoriously hard-to-treat pancreatic cancer, the US Food and Drug Administration has approved Revolution Medicines’ daraxonrasib. The drug stops Ras proteins from sending signals to activate tumor-driving molecular pathways and in turn extends the life of people with pancreatic cancer driven by Ras. The drug nearly doubled survival time for participants with metastatic pancreatic cancer in a Phase 3 trial. The approval comes just over a year after Revolution Medicines scientist and 2026 C&EN Talented 12 honoree Jim Cregg published on the discovery of daraxonrasib in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry. It is the result of years of effort to develop a stable, noncovalent tricomplex that blocks multiple Ras mutants and, crucially, can be taken as a pill instead of an injection. “This approval validates more than a decade of work aimed at pancreatic cancer, a primarily Ras-driven disease and one of the most difficult challenges in medicine, cancer biology, and drug discovery,” Revolution Medicines CEO Mark Goldsmith said on an investor call after the approval. The company is marketing daraxonrasib under the name Rasonque and has set a list price of $39,800 for a 30-day supply.
—Rowan Walrath
Lilly to acquire Merida Biosciences for up to $2.9 billion
The pharma giant Eli Lilly and Company has agreed to acquire the autoimmunity drug firm Merida Biosciences for an up-front payment and milestone payments totaling up to $2.88 billion. With the purchase, Lilly will get Merida’s MER511, a drug candidate for Graves’ disease and thyroid eye disease. The protein is intended to counteract the autoantibodies that overactivate the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor. It is currently in Phase 1 clinical trials. In an email, analysts from Leerink Partners say the deal indicates that Lilly is attempting to further diversify away from weight-management drugs. Lilly has been on a spending spree since the success of its blockbuster glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) drugs; with the new deal, it has agreed to buy at least 12 firms this year.
—Sarah Braner
Genentech enters ADC pact with DualityBio
Genentech has entered a collaboration with the Shanghai-based firm DualityBio. Under the agreement, DualityBio will use its DUPAC platform to create antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for targets provided by Genentech. The San Francisco–based firm will assume responsibility for further clinical development and commercialization. Genentech will pay DualityBio $45 million up front, with the potential for more than $1 billion in milestones. The deal marks yet another example of the Western drug industry’s interest in Chinese biotechnology firms.
—Sarah Braner