NEWS
Two invest in Brazil
Nouryon has broken ground for a new dedicated“ customer experience and innovation centre” for home and personal care at Itupeva, Brazil. This is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2026, pending approval from local authorities. It will bring the company’ s total number of innovation centres worldwide to 15.
Facilities will include laboratories and experiential stations for formulation and testing collaboration with customers and for Nouryon’ s own products, including fully biobased chelates for cleaning applications and biopolymer-based personal care products.
Separately, Lubrizol has opened a new office in São Paulo. This will house multiple business functions and corporate departments. In addition to expanding its Beauty & Home applications laboratory, Lubrizol will open a new in vivo research lab focused on hair and skin in March. This will be the firm’ s third Beauty Research Institute globally.
IN BRIEF
Elementis buys Alchemy Elementis has acquired UK based Alchemy Ingredients for an enterprise value of about $ 22 million. This brings together two firms mainly active in the personal care market. Alchemy makes natural and sustainable rheology modifier ingredients that fully or partially replace synthetic raw materials in cosmetic formulations. The key technologies are oil gelling and water gelling.
Wacker to cut jobs Wacker Chemie has launched the PACE project“ to make significant cost savings in its production environment and administration set-up”. The plan aims to save over € 300 million / year by the end of 2027, with half coming via a reduction in personnel. More than 1,500 jobs will be cut in this process, mostly in Germany.
UK firm Thomas Swan & Co. celebrated a major milestone on New Year’ s Eve 2025, which was exactly 100 years since the original Thomas Swan( pictured) registered his new company. Originally it took waste slag from the local iron industry in Consett, County Durham, and combined this with tar to make road surfaces. It has since grown into a manufacturer of performance and speciality chemicals and advanced materials, notably graphene. It has remained independent under family ownership and is now led by Swan’ s great-grandson Harry Swan.
Ground broken at KPPC facility
KPPC, a Kanto Group company, has broken ground on its US Arizona Plant at the Sonoran Valley Industrial Park in Casa Grande, Arizona. This is a next-generation ultra-pure chemical manufacturing campus that will support chip manufacturing in one of the US’ s major regions for this industry.
The initial Phase I investment of over $ 120 million will create some 80 permanent jobs, with a further 120 expected later. It will make ultra-pure and proprietary functional chemicals for semiconductor fabrication, wafer cleaning, etching, CMP, photolithography and advanced packaging to chip makers across the US, such as TSMC, Intel and Micron.
Production is expected to begin in late 2027. KPPC expects the site to grow into a full semiconductor chemical campus, with total investment projected to reach around $ 500 million by 2035.
Alzchem plans growth Germany’ s Alzchem has approved an investment of about € 120 million to build a highly automated production plant for creatine and its precursors, plus upstream infrastructure. Commissioning is planned in stages starting in 2H 2027. Applications will be mainly in health, food and sport, where Alzchem’ s Creapure and Creavitalis have already enjoyed significant growth.
Innexis is the name The Infrareal Group has unveiled a unified brand identity called Innexis. This new entity includes Pharmaserv, which operates the Behringwerke pharma and life science park in Marburg, as well as Pharmapark Jena, both in Germany, and Pharmapark Orth Management, which owns and operates the pharmaceutical and biotech site in Orth, Lower Austria.
JAN / FEB 2026 SPECCHEMONLINE. COM
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