NEWS
Merck to exit from pigments
Merck KGaA is to sell its global Surface Solutions business unit to Global New Material International Holdings ( GNMI ), one of the world ’ s largest pearlescent pigment producers , for € 665 million in cash , subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions . This includes works council agreement for the French part of the business , which is not yet part of the deal but is subject to a binding agreement .
The sale should close in 2025 . The proceeds will be used to further strengthen its strategic core businesses . According to Merck CEO and chair Belén Garijo , it “ will further sharpen our focus on hightech applications in electronics , such as driving the development of nextgeneration chips ”.
Surface Solutions offers pigments for coating , industrial and cosmetic applications . It had sales of € 411 million in 2023 and employed about 1,200 people , more than half in Germany . All will transfer . This adds sites in Germany , Japan and the US to GNMI ’ s in China and Korea . Merck will continue to own the site in Germany , at Gernsheim , with GNMI taking a long-term lease for the part used by Surface Solutions . The GreenTech Park Fluxum in Gernsheim is not affected by the sale .
There has long been speculation about Merck exiting from pigments , which is dwarfed by the much larger , more profitable activities in both life sciences and electronics . As long ago as 2019 , company insiders told news agency Bloomberg that discussions were being had and that private equity players were interested in combining it with Clariant ’ s activities in the same field . A price of up to € 1.5 billion was mentioned .
Merck has also joined the Semiconductor-X research project on the digitalisation of supply chains in the semiconductor industry . Funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs & Climate Action and led by Intel Germany and the Fraunhofer IFF , Semiconductor-X currently has 20 members . Merck ’ s role , as a supplier of chemicals and materials in this field , will be “ to contribute to the development
of digital structures and solutions for value chains ”.
The work will involve developing digital twins of supply and value chains and enabling a decentralised , sovereign and secure data exchange , aided by data models and opensource software . Project members are working on more sustainable systems for semiconductor manufacturing , to reduce the
CO 2 footprint , and energy and water consumption ’ along the value chain . It will run until September 2026 .
Shortly before this , Merck had agreed to acquire Unity-SC , a supplier of metrology and inspection instrumentation for the semiconductor industry , for € 155 million plus further milestone-based payments , subject to agreement with the works council . Unity-SC is based near Grenoble in France and employs about 160 people .
Merck said that Unity-SC ’ s precise metrology measurement devices make it possible to further optimise the quality , yield , and manufacturing costs of chips used in applications related to artificial intelligence ( AI ), high-performance computing and high-bandwidth memory . The deal will thus further strengthen its ability to benefit from the growth opportunities AI offers .
BASF , ACIB and the University of Graz have co-developed a computer-assisted regression model to improve enzyme performance and enable biocatalytic processes to be scaled up faster . Dr Stefan Seemayer , global head of computational protein engineering at BASF , said that it “ considerably improves the efficiency of biocatalytic processes and gives us a new understanding of enzymatic catalysis ”. Only a few preliminary lab tests , such as determining the unfolding curve of the enzyme , need to be carried out . The data are entered into the computer model , which then computes the optimal combination of reaction temperature and solvent concentration for enzyme performance . In the past , this was a complex process involving many experiments .
SEP / OCT 2024 SPECCHEMONLINE . COM
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