New York-based private investment New Mountain Capital has acquired Ascensus Specialties from its previous majority owner, Wind Point Partners. Terms were not disclosed. Wind Point will continue to invest in the company through a special purpose vehicle raised in association with the transaction.
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.
Pharmaceutical CDMO Evotec has acquired GlaxoSmithKline’s site at Verona, Italy, where its Aptuit subsidiary is already active, employing 750. Terms were not disclosed. Following a meeting with site workers, the company has also agreed to rename the site Campus Levi-Montalcini, in honour of the Italian Nobel laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini.
During its 2020 results presentation, Italian API producer Olon announced the completion of a large-scale, multi-purpose, high-containment HPAPI production line at its Rodano site near Milan. This is already available to customers, the firm added.
As rumoured last month, BASF and private equity investor Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) have exited their joint ownership of paper and water treatment chemicals company Solenis, by selling it to Platinum Equity. Solenis will be merged with Platinum’s existing subsidiary Sigura, creating a player in water treatment with $3.5 billion/year in sales.
Kemira has announced two further investments at Yanzhou, China. A new sodium hypochlorite production unit is now being built, while the pre-engineering phase is now being finalised to increase polyaluminium chloride (PAC) production. These should be operational in January and March 2022 respectively.
Lonza has completed the carve-out of its Lonza Specialty Ingredients, as announced in February. The business, temporarily known as LSI, will be relaunched shortly under a different name. It is now owned by Herens HoldCo, an entity controlled by private equity firms Bain Capital and Cinven, who acquired it for an enterprise value of CHF 4.2 billion.
