Westlake closes US vinyl and styrene capacity; Samsung Biologics buys Human Genome Sciences

 

The chemical industry’s year ends with the dreary news of plant closures on three continents. In Japan, Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui Chemicals are implementing plans to shutter ethylene capacity in Chiba. They blame competition from massive new petrochemical facilities in China. In Europe, Vynova has appointed administrators to oversee insolvency proceedings at facilities in England and Germany.

In the US, Westlake is shutting down facilities that make polyvinyl chloride, vinyl chloride, and chlorine by the end of this month. These closures bear watching because the petrochemical downturn has thus far spared US ethylene derivatives, which have a presumed international cost advantage. The company cites low prices in export markets.

Because of the holidays, Business Watch will not publish on Dec. 30.

Questions? Comments? Tips? Let us know. Email Alex Tullo, C&EN’s senior correspondent for business, at a_tullo@acs.org.

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Business in brief

Westlake enacts big cuts in chlorovinyls, styrene

Market oversupply is forcing Westlake to close several chlorovinyl and styrene plants in the US by the end of this month. The company is shutting down its Aberdeen, Mississippi, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plant, which has 450,000 metric tons (t) per year of capacity, about 15% of the company’s total. Westlake is also closing vinyl chloride and chlor-alkali plants in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Those plants have about 400,000 t of vinyl chloride, 400,000 t of caustic soda, and 375,000 t of chlorine capacity per year. The chlor-alkali plant uses asbestos diaphragm technology, which the industry has been phasing out. In Lake Charles, the company will also close a styrene plant with annual capacity of 260,000 t. Westlake says all these plants served the export market. “The overcapacity in the global markets created downward pressure on the sales price for our exports, leading to unprofitable conditions at some of our higher-cost manufacturing sites,” Westlake CEO Jean-Marc Gilson told analysts on a conference call earlier this month. The company expects to incur $415 million in write-off charges, severance, and closing costs related to the closures. It expects that the moves will save it $175 million in costs in 2026.

—Alex Tullo

UK government to invest in Ineos’s Grangemouth site

The UK government is supporting Ineos’s £150 million (about $200 million) investment in the chemical company’s complex in Grangemouth, Scotland, with a £75 million pound loan guarantee and a £50 million grant. Ineos and the government say the investment will keep the Grangemouth site running as a critical supplier to UK industry. The complex, which employs about 500 people, will be home to the UK’s last ethylene cracker if ExxonMobil closes its cracker in Fife, Scotland, in February as planned. Ineos also produces polyethylene and polypropylene in Grangemouth. Ineos chairman Jim Ratcliffe used the investment announcement to rail once more against the UK government’s environmental policies. “The answer is NOT decarbonisation by deindustrialisation,” he wrote. “Without a strong manufacturing base, the economy will continue to decline.”

—Michael McCoy

Two Vynova plants in Europe declared insolvent

Troubled European chlorovinyl producer Vynova is placing plants in the UK and Germany under insolvency proceedings. The company has hired an administrator for its plant in Runcorn, England, which makes chlorine and ethylene dichloride (EDC). The chlorine is produced in a joint venture with Ineos Inovyn; the EDC is shipped to a Vynova plant in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, where it is used to make vinyl chloride and then polyvinyl chloride. That plant has also been placed in insolvency. Vynova announced earlier this year that it would close its polyvinyl chloride plant in Beek, the Netherlands.

—Alex Tullo

Orbia opens battery electrolyte facility in Wisconsin

The chemical maker Orbia has completed the expansion of a facility for custom battery electrolyte blending in Madison, Wisconsin, increasing capacity by 300%. The site, which opened in August 2024, produces small and medium-size batches of electrolytes for lithium-ion batteries as well as newer lithium-sulfur and sodium-ion batteries, Orbia says. The company says it can provide formulations in 4 weeks or less, faster than overseas suppliers can. Last year, Orbia and its partner Syensqo delayed construction of a much larger plant in Georgia that would produce polyvinylidene fluoride, a binder used to make batteries. Orbia also delayed construction of a plant in Louisiana that would produce lithium hexafluorophosphate, a salt used in electrolytes.

—Michael McCoy

Idemitsu and Mitsui execute consolidation plan

Idemitsu Kosan and Mitsui Chemicals are proceeding with plans to consolidate their joint petrochemical operations in Chiba, Japan. “However, given the opening of large new and expanded petrochemical complexes elsewhere—mainly in China—coupled with declining domestic demand for ethylene, the business environment for petrochemicals in Japan is expected to become increasingly challenging,” Idemitsu says in a statement. Under the plant, Idemitsu will close its ethylene cracker in Chiba, which has 370,000 metric tons (t) of annual capacity and will consolidate production in Mitsui’s 550,000-metric-ton-per-year cracker. The companies expect the plan to go into effect in July 2027.

—Alex Tullo

Factorial takes its solid-state batteries public via SPAC

The solid-state battery maker Factorial Energy, one of C&EN’s 10 Start-Ups to Watch in 2021, is going public by way of a merger with Cartesian Growth Corporation III, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. The deal values Factorial at between $1.1 billion and $1.5 billion and is expected to close in mid-2026. The resulting public company will be listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the symbol FAC. The firm has batteries with both polymer- and sulfide-based solid electrolytes and is commercializing them for use in electric vehicles as well as aviation, robotics, and personal electronics. SPAC mergers have a checkered history, especially for start-ups based in chemistry and adjacent hard-tech fields, but Cartesian chairman Peter Yu says in the announcement of the deal that his firm has done its due diligence on Factorial.

—Craig Bettenhausen

BASF will sell detergent brightener unit to ICIG

BASF has agreed to sell its optical brightening agent business to Catexel, the home and personal care chemical division of International Chemical Investors Group, for an undisclosed sum. ICIG, a privately held specialty chemical maker, says the acquisition is part of its strategy to expand in detergent ingredients. Optical brighteners are fluorescent dyes used primarily in laundry detergents to make cloths appear whiter after washing. The transaction, which the firms expect to close in the first quarter of 2026, includes 80 employees and a manufacturing site in Monthey, Switzerland.

—Craig Bettenhausen

Quote of the week

AstraZeneca grabs rights to a pan-KRAS inhibitor

UK drugmaker AstraZeneca will pay Jacobio Pharma $100 million for the rights to an oral pan-KRAS inhibitor outside China. Inside China, the two companies will codevelop and cocommercialize the early-stage cancer drug candidate, JAB-23E73, according to the Chinese biotech’s release about the deal. KRAS is an important oncogene with multiple cancer-causing mutants. Jacobio used its allosteric drug discovery platform to go after multiple mutants with the same small molecule. In October, the firm presented positive preclinical data for JAB-23E73, and the compound is currently in Phase I clinical trials in China and in the US for patients with advanced solid tumors harboring KRAS gene alterations.

—Laura Howes

Sanofi licenses Alzheimer’s antibody from Korean firm

The French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has shelled out $80 million and promised up to $1 billion more in milestone payments for an antibody meant to treat Alzheimer’s disease. The South Korean biotech Adel is developing the antibody, ADEL-Y01, which targets the protein tau acetylated at Lysine-280 (acK280). Tau is thought to be implicated in cognitive decline. Other treatments and diagnostics have taken aim at phosphorylated tau. ADEL-Y01 is currently in early-stage human trials.

—Rowan Walrath

BioMarin to buy rare disease firm for $4.8 billion

BioMarin Pharmaceutical is slated to buy Amicus Therapeutics, a rare disease drug developer with commercial drugs for Fabry disease and Pompe disease, in a deal that values Amicus at $4.8 billion. Amicus’s drugs have brought in $599 million in revenue in the last four quarters. The firm is also developing a small molecule for focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, a kidney disease. The molecule, DMX-200, is in late-stage human trials.

—Rowan Walrath

AI firm Edison Scientific raises $70 million

Edison Scientific, a start-up that aims to automate scientific research, has raised $70 million from investors including Triatomic Capital and Spark Capital. Edison, a for-profit company, spun out of FutureHouse, a nonprofit artificial intelligence venture funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Like FutureHouse, Edison is focused on building AI scientist–agentic AI software that can analyze scientific literature and generate its own hypothesis. FutureHouse cofounders Sam Rodriques and Andrew White will lead Edison. The decision to launch the firm was driven by rising commercial interest in FutureHouse’s tools, Rodriques tells Bloomberg. In November, Edison launched its tool, Kosmos, which the company says has better accuracy than a similar FutureHouse tool and can cut research time by 6 months.

—Aayushi Pratap

Samsung Biologics to acquire GSK’s Human Genome Sciences

Samsung Biologics is expanding its US presence by acquiring US manufacturing facilities. The South Korean drug services firm has agreed to buy Human Genome Sciences (HGS) from GSK for $280 million. The deal includes HGS’s two plants in Rockville, Maryland, which have 60,000 L of total capacity to produce biologic ingredients for drugs in clinical studies and the commercial market, according to Samsung Biologics’ press release. HGS was founded in 1992 to develop gene-based therapies; GSK acquired it in 2012.

—Aayushi Pratap

What we’re reading

• Ethylene cutbacks in South Korea could reach 3.66 million metric tons: BusinessKorea
• Solar is the fastest-growing energy technology in history: RiskHedge
• The US recycling rate for polyethylene terephthalate bottles slipped from 32.5% in 2023 to 30.2% in 2024: Napcor