South Korean paint and chemicals firm KCC has agreed to acquire the minority stake of SJL Partners Momentive Performance Materials and assume full ownership. This is subject to customary closing conditions and no price has been disclosed. Based in New York state, Momentive is a major supplier of silicone and speciality products for applications including personal care.

Wacker Chemie is to invest an amount in the “low triple-digit million euro range” on a new, 20,000 tonnes/year silicones facility at Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. Development work on the site is set to begin shortly, with construction starting in Q2, subject to approval by the authorities. It is due onstream at the start of 2025 and will create up to 20 jobs.

Wacker Chemie has held a kick-off event at its site at Zhangjiagang in China’s Jiangsu province to mark the start of construction of several new production lines for functional silicone fluids, silicone emulsions and silicone elastomer gels. It will invest about €150 million on the expansion project. The lines are due onstream in 2H 2025

Swamini Kulkarni of Allied Market Research looks at the different types of agricultural adjuvants available and the increased popularity of silicones

Over the years, the agricultural sector has witnessed numerous technological innovations to improve the overall performance of agrochemicals and increase agricultural yield. The major contributor to this is agricultural adjuvants, a type of additive that is added to agrochemicals or other crop production products to improve their performance.

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.”

Dow has announced what it described as “a series of incremental, high-return capacity expansions to support growing demand across key end-markets, all of which value sustainable solutions and continue to grow faster than GDP”. Most relate in full or in part to specialities.

Momentive Performance Materials has outlined what it calls “a series of steps to accelerate its global transition from commodity basics chemicals to speciality silicones”. By the end, it expects to have 300 fewer employees in the Capital Region, where it is also considering investment in R&D facilities.