The Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Centre (IBioIC) is to install a 300-litre fermenter at FlexBio, its scale-up facility at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland. This was funded by a £847,000 from the devolved Scottish government.

During its 2023 results presentation, Evonik announced that it will establish a new organisational structure by the end of 2026. Under ‘Evonik Tailor Made’ it will eliminate administrative activities that do not directly support its businesses and bundle key tasks in the new structure.

During its full-year results presentation, CDMO and API supplier EuroAPI announced the launch of Focus-2027, a comprehensive project that will seek to unlock profitable growth and increase returns. Key means of achieving include:

* Streamlining the value-added API portfolio by discontinuing 13 with low or negative margins and focusing on highly differentiated, profitable products, such as vitamin B12, prostaglandins, peptides and oligonucleotides

* Having a focused CDMO offer “leveraging our recognised capabilities and technology platforms” *

The board of Chemours has put CEO Mark Newman, CFO Jonathan Lock and principal accounting officer Camela Wisel on administrative leave pending the completion of an internal review by independent counsel that the board’s audit committee is overseeing.

In its annual results presentation, BASF announced plans to reduce costs at its main verbund site in Ludwigshafen by a further €1 billion/year by the end of 2026. This comes on top of a similar scale of cuts initiated in late 2022.

Last year, results in Germany suffered due to substantially negative earnings at Ludwigshafen, the company said. This was attributed to two main causes: the temporary low-demand environment is affecting volume development both upstream and downstream, while structurally high energy prices are raising production costs upstream.

Three speciality chemicals companies signed agreements to source more renewable electricity for key sites in February. In Europe, Evonik concluded separate long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) for solar and wind power, while Arkema signed multiple agreements covering four main sites in the US and Sasol and Air Liquide have concluded a third PPA in South Africa.

A consortium of scientists has published what it calls “a more robust way of grouping chemicals and using read-across for toxicological data to meet regulatory requirements”, based on the use of metabolomics. This could greatly reduce animal testing, they added.