Japan’s Kao Corporation has joined the $120 million venture previously announced by Genomatica and Unilever to scale and commercialise plant-based alternatives to palm kernel oil. The firm described this is as a key move towards meeting goals of becoming carbon-neutral by 2040 carbon-negative by 2050, by making responsibly sourced palm oil and derivatives a critical feedstock.

Dutch start-up RheoCube has opened up its first US office in the Cambridge Innovation Center in Boston to accelerate the commercial expansion there. Further new locations are planned, which will be announced later.

The company, which was built by scientific modellers, experimentalists and other experts within Electric Ant Lab, markets a cloud-based experimental research platform. This is claimed to offer R&D scientists “a digital and fully integrated research solution to test hypotheses, reduce costly trial-and-error and accelerate their research”.

Clariant has agreed to sell its global quaternary ammonium compounds to Global Amines Company, its Singapore-based 50-50 joint venture with Wilmar, for $113 million. Subject to regulatory approval and standard closing conditions, this is expected to close in 1H 2023.

BASF has signed a partnership, including a strategic equity investment, in Chinese firm Ingredi. Precise details were not disclosed but BASF said that this will enable Ingredi to extend its production facilities and that the two companies will work together to “identify new solutions and commercialise these to the global personal care market”.

Japan's Kao Corporation is to double capacity for the synthetic fragrance methyl dihydrojasmonate (MDJ) at its site in Olesa, Spain, by adding a second production facility. MDJ is used to give a jasmine fragrance to a wide range of consumer products and Kao is already the leader in the 20,000 tonnes/year European market, which is projected to grow at 4% year.

Evonik has agreed to sell its US betaine business in Hopewell, Virginia (pictured), to speciality chemicals company Kensing. The deal is expected to close in Q3. This follows the sale of the firm’s UK betaines site at Milton Keynes and the closure of another at Granollers, Spain, both in 2020. 

Evonik will, however, continue its betaine businesses in Europe, Asia and Latin America. It will also retain the rest of the Hopewell facility, which produces additives for polyurethane foam manufacture, plus agricultural and industrial applications.

Wacker Chemie has announced plans to invest “a double-digit million euro amount” on it the new Biotechnology Centre at its corporate research facility in Munich, which is due to be operational in 2024. CEO Christian Hartel said that building it “will allow us to concentrate and intensify our research activities in the area of biotechnology. The additional capacity we will create here will accelerate the growth of our life-sciences division.”