U K
B U S I N E S S
P A R K
home page


Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals 1996
2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996

The information below comes from the UK Activity Report.
Click here for further details

Cortecs International has launched Helisal One-Step, a new product that tests blood samples for the presence of the bacteria that causes gastritis and peptic ulcers. 31-Dec-1996 Amersham International has acquired the radiopharmaceutical business of Sorin Diagnostics from Sorin Biomedica of Italy for an initial £4.3m. 24-Dec-1996 Glaxo Wellcome has won approval to sell Imigram, the migraine drug, in inhaled form in 12 European countries. 19-Dec-1996 Scotia has won FDA approval to start clinical trials for Foscan, a photodynamic cancer treatment. 17-Dec-1996 Xenova has raised about £23m in a stock market placing in order to fund the development of its drugs that are in trials. 12-Dec-1996 Cookson is to gradually withdraw from the manufacture and sale of industrial pigments, setting up licensing agreements with Hoechst and closing its plant in New Jersey. 12-Dec-1996 Celltech expects to be transformed into a profitable pharmaceuticals company in 1998 with the launch of two septic shock treatments developed in conjunction with Bayer. 11-Dec-1996 Scotia, the biotechnology company, has reported encouraging results for SC-101c, the treatment for severe weight loss in cancer. 07-Dec-1996 Cantab Pharmaceuticals has been given FDA approval for human trials of its Disc (disabled, infective, single cycle) virus technology. 03-Dec-1996 British Biotech has begun human trials of BB-2983, its arthritis drug, in association with Glaxo Wellcome. 29-Nov-1996 British Biotech is preparing to launch its first product in 1998 - lexipafant, a treatment for acute pancreatic disease. 28-Nov-1996 ICI is to acquire St Clair, the Canadian chain of 400 paint stores. 28-Nov-1996 Oxford Molecular has won a US patent on software that manages libraries of molecular shapes. 22-Nov-1996 Chiroscience is acquiring Darwin Molecular, the US biotechnology company, for £72m, a move which will give it new skills in genomics and combinatorial chemistry. 21-Nov-1996 Laporte is to close offices in Luton and Bedford Square and set up its main corporate office in London. 20-Nov-1996 Vanguard Medica is to start the final stage of clinical testing for VML251, its migraine drug, and hopes to launch the product in 2000. 19-Nov-1996 British Biotech is to receive up to £45m from Tanabe Seiyaku for the development and marketing of marimastat, its oral anti-cancer drug, in Japan. 15-Nov-1996 Amersham International has signed a cross-licensing deal with Roche of Switzerland and Perkin-Elmer of the US, thus opening up the genetic research market to Amersham. 13-Nov-1996 Glaxo Wellcome is to pay $72m to Ivax Corporation of the US for the right to use its breath-activated inhalation device. 12-Nov-1996 BP Chemicals is planning a £528m petrochemical complex in Oman to produce 450,000 tonnes per year of ethylene and polyethylene, with start-up by 2000. 11-Nov-1996 BTG has licensed an animal allergy vaccine to Peptide Therapeutics, who is in discussions with major companies about the commercialisation of the vaccine for use with pets. 05-Nov-1996 Oxford Molecular is forming an alliance with Prolifix, the biotechnology company, in which Prolifix will fund research into drug development and pay royalty fees to Oxford Molecular for its drug design software. 01-Nov-1996 BP Chemicals is to set up a joint venture with Shanghai Petrochemical to build a $2.5bn petrochemical complex in Shanghai, including a 650,000 tonnes per year ethylene cracker. 22-Oct-1996 Pharmaceutical companies are expected to spend a record £2bn on research and development this year according to a report from the Centre for Medicines Research. 22-Oct-1996 Shire Pharmaceuticals' Alzheimer's disease drug, Reminyl, is moving into the final stage of clinical trials in the US, through its partner Janssen Pharmaceutica. 22-Oct-1996 Cortecs International has launched Clotam, the anti-migraine drug, into the UK under licence from Bristol-Myers Squibb. 22-Oct-1996 The Office of Fair Trading is to refer price fixing in the non-prescription drugs market to the restrictive trade practices court, a move which could result in a price war in pharmacies. 19-Oct-1996 Amersham International has spent £42m increasing its stake in Nihon Medi-Physics, its radiopharmaceutical joint venture with Sumitomo Chemical of Japan. 19-Oct-1996 KS Biomedix has agreed a licensing deal with Hoffman-La Roche to develop a sheep monoclonal antibody. 15-Oct-1996 Kalon, the paints company, has won approval from the courts to restructure its French operations with the loss of 100 jobs. 15-Oct-1996 Shell and BASF are to merge their polyethylene businesses into a 50:50 joint venture in response to the industry's overcapacity and volatile prices. 11-Oct-1996 Chiroscience is planning 15 new clinical trials on its Levobupivacaine long-lasting local anaesthetic, and is seeking a partner to continue its development. 08-Oct-1996 An explosion has hit the Albright & Wilson flame-retardant chemicals plant in Avonmouth, apparently due to sodium chlorite being discharged into a storage tank containing epichlorhydrin. 04-Oct-1996 Shire Pharmaceuticals, the developer of prescription medicines, is in discussions to acquire two or three companies that could market its products. 28-Sep-1996 Celltech has won a US patent for a technique to build new human antibodies, which it hopes will lead to a new stream of royalty income. 27-Sep-1996 Xenova, the biotechnology company, is planning a £25m share offering next month in order to take its experimental drugs into the next development stage. 24-Sep-1996 Blagden Industries is planning to spend £60m on acquisitions to develop its speciality chemicals business, particularly in the US and Europe. 20-Sep-1996 English China Clays, the speciality chemicals and minerals concern, is planning a major restructuring which will include an overhaul of its manufacturing, distribution and research functions. 17-Sep-1996 Astra of Sweden is to set up a £62m pharmaceuticals research centre in Loughborough, with the creation of about 200 new jobs. 10-Sep-1996 Brunner Mond, the soda ash manufacturer, is planning a stock market listing in order to raise £46m for debt-reduction and the redemption of preference shares. 10-Sep-1996 Oxford Biomedica, the gene-therapy concern, is planning a public share offer in November in order to raise £5m for the funding of a lease on a site in Oxford and the recruitment of up to 30 staff. 09-Sep-1996 Vanguard Medica, the drug development concern, is to start developing compounds under licence for biotechnology companies. 06-Sep-1996 Levington Horticulture, the fertiliser maker, is planning a £30m listing which will raise money to repay borrowings and to finance acquisitions. 02-Sep-1996 ICI Surfactants Indonesia has opened a manufacturing plant near Jakarta. 29-Aug-1996 BTG has signed a worldwide development and marketing deal with Forest Laboratories of the US for a new painkiller that combines oxycodone with ibuprofen. 29-Aug-1996 Hickson & Welch has won a £1.5m DTI grant to expand its chemicals plant in Castleford. 28-Aug-1996 ICI has dropped plans to build a titanium dioxide plant in China, following disagreements with its Chinese partner Yu Chang. 21-Aug-1996 ICI is selling Devoe's marine coatings business to Ameron International of California. 09-Aug-1996 Glaxo has won European approval to sell its Epivir Aids drug, which could generate sales of up to $400m a year. 09-Aug-1996 Cleveland Potash is seeking permission to extend its Boulby potash mine further underground towards Whitby, in order to secure the future of the mine for another ten years. 05-Aug-1996 Brunner Mond, the soda ash maker, is planning a stock market listing in the autumn, in order to raise £60m. 05-Aug-1996 Royal Dutch/Shell is looking to form an alliance with a producer of PTA, the raw material for PET, in order to boost its underperforming chemicals business. 02-Aug-1996 Cambrio, the biotechnology concern, has abandoned plans for a flotation due to the recent poor performance of biotechnology shares. 31-Jul-1996 ICI is planning 2,700 job cuts, mainly in the US, as part of a productivity drive in response to tough market conditions. 26-Jul-1996 Cortecs International has started trials of a bronchitis vaccine that is taken by mouth. 25-Jul-1996 KS Biomedix has announced plans to start licensing its sheep monoclonal antibody technology to major drug companies within a year. 24-Jul-1996 British Biotech has seen only about half its shareholders take up its £143m rights issue, in a further disappointment for the UK biotechnology sector. 18-Jul-1996 Ellis & Everard is looking to acquire European polymer distribution businesses. 16-Jul-1996 BOC is acquiring a controlling stake in the Volgograd Oxygen Factory in Russia. 16-Jul-1996 ML Laboratories has won approval from the Medicines Control Agency to use the salbutamol asthma drug in its dry powder inhaler. 10-Jul-1996 SmithKline Beecham has won UK approval for ropinirole, the treatment for Parkinson's disease which will be sold under the ReQuip trade name. 09-Jul-1996 Glaxo Wellcome has lost a court battle in North Carolina, which means that Novopharm of Canada will be able to start selling a generic version of Glaxo's Zantac anti-ulcer drug when the patent expires in July 1997. 08-Jul-1996 Zeneca has won FDA approval to sell Kadian, a morphine-based pain relief drug, in capsule form in the US. 06-Jul-1996 SmithKline Beecham is selling results of its gene research to Schering-Plough of the US and Synthelabo of France for $55m and $35m respectively. 03-Jul-1996 Glaxo Wellcome and Vertex of the US are acquiring non-exclusive worldwide rights to a GD Searle patent for $25m, which will enable them to work on the 141W94 anti-HIV drug. 02-Jul-1996 The government has banned the use of Roseclear, Zeneca's garden pesticide, due to fears over potential eye damage. 28-Jun-1996 British Biotech is planning a £143m rights issue to fund its development into a major international pharmaceutical group. 27-Jun-1996 Chiroscience has launched its first product, an arthritis drug called dexketoprofen, in Spain. 27-Jun-1996 Laporte, the chemicals company, has sold most of its Australasian operations to Fernz Corp of New Zealand for £29.5m. 27-Jun-1996 Quintiles, the US pharmaceutical research company, is to set up a clinical data management service plant in West Lothian, creating up to 300 jobs. 25-Jun-1996 BTP, the speciality chemicals company, is planning to make further substantial acquisitions, but is not considering any more disposals. 25-Jun-1996 Cortecs, the biotechnology company, has signed a deal with two Danish organisations - Osteometer Biotech and the Centre for Clinical and Basic Research - concerning clinical trials on oral methods of taking insulin. 25-Jun-1996 Alizyme, the biopharmaceutical company developing drugs for obesity, is planning a share placing on Aim next month in order to raise up to £15m. 25-Jun-1996 Zeneca has won US approval to sell its new Merrem antibiotic, which works against a wide range of bacteria. 25-Jun-1996 Zeneca has signed a deal with Incyte Pharmaceuticals of the US to give it access to genetics databases, at a cost of up to £7m a year. 18-Jun-1996 Appryl, the Elf-BP joint venture, is planning a £100m 300,000 tonnes per year polypropylene plant in Grangemouth, creating up to 200 jobs. 11-Jun-1996 Oxford Molecular has announced a research deal with Alizyme in which they will develop compounds to treat obesity. 11-Jun-1996 Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham are to collaborate in the development of treatments for antibiotic-resistant germs. 07-Jun-1996 Cortecs International has raised £46m in an institutional share placing, and some of the proceeds will be used to show that its process that allows osteoporosis drugs to be taken orally can be adapted to work on other molecules. 05-Jun-1996 Therapeutic Antibodies, the specialist in poison antidotes, is planning a flotation through a £30m institutional placing that will value it at £150m. 04-Jun-1996 Cortecs International has won FDA clearance to market a diagnostic kit that detects the presence of a bug that causes peptic ulcers. 31-May-1996 Hanson, the industrial conglomerate planning a demerger, is to allocate most of its debt to the chemicals division, which will be renamed Millennium Chemicals. 17-May-1996 Cantab Pharmaceuticals, the biotechnology concern, plans to raise £25m in a share placing to increase production capacity and speed up the development of at least one product. 15-May-1996 Chiroscience has bought Resolution Chemicals' pilot-scale development centre from E Merck for £5.5m. 08-May-1996 Huntsman of the US is still trying to buy BP's styrene and polystyrene business, which has plants in Wales and France. 07-May-1996 SmithKline Beecham has had a set-back in its plans for the Coreg heart drug, as advisers to the US FDA have voted not to recommend its approval. 04-May-1996 ICI has set up two new divisions - performance chemicals and polyester. 03-May-1996 Vanguard Medica, the pharmaceutical development company, is to float with a value of £111m. 03-May-1996 ICI is to shake up its top management by replacing up to 40 of its top 150 executives with external appointments. 01-May-1996 Chiroscience has pulled out of a deal with Pharmacia & Upjohn that was to see them jointly develop Chiroscience's levobupivacaine long-lasting anaesthetic. 26-Apr-1996 Amersham International is increasing its stake in Nihon Medi-Physics, its radiopharmaceutical joint venture with Sumitomo Chemical, from 20% to 50% in exchange for Y8.3bn plus the transfer of its Japanese healthcare to NMP. 25-Apr-1996 Oxford Molecular, the drug design concern, is to undergo a three-year joint research programme with Yamanouchi Pharmaceutical of Japan. 19-Apr-1996 Peptide Therapeutics expects to sign a licensing agreement with Mochida of Japan in which Mochida will test and sell Peptide products in return for royalty payments. 17-Apr-1996 The chemical industry has continued to relocate outside the UK, with a 40% increase in UK chemical assets abroad between 1989 and 1994, and a fall in foreign chemical assets in the UK. 16-Apr-1996 The UK chemical and pharmaceutical industries saw a 51% rise in productivity between 1990 and 1995, twice the level of many of their international competitors, according to a review by the Office of National Statistics. 11-Apr-1996 Yule Catto, the chemicals and building products concern, is looking for acquisitions that complement its "products, market sectors or management terms". 11-Apr-1996 Huntsman of the US is to more than double polystyrene production at its Carrington plant near Manchester, creating 30 jobs, as part of a major worldwide investment programme. 09-Apr-1996 Hickson International, the speciality chemicals concern, says it will make a major disposal this year to cut debt. 03-Apr-1996 Scotia Holdings, the drug development concern, has raised £10.2m in the US for research funding. 02-Apr-1996 Proteus International and ML Laboratories have agreed to co-operate in the development of a prostate and breast cancer treatment. 29-Mar-1996 Universal Ceramic Materials is planning a share offer to raise £3.6m to expand its Humberside magnesia plant. 23-Mar-1996 Cortecs International has granted Teva Pharmaceuticals of Israel a licence to sell an oral formulation of salmon calcitonin, a drug for osteoporosis. 22-Mar-1996 Glaxo Wellcome has published results for trials of Valtrex which indicate that people who continue to take the herpes treatment reduce the risk of recurrence. 22-Mar-1996 Blagden Industries is planning a £10m factory to supply formaldehyde to ICI's polyurethane plant in Rotterdam. 22-Mar-1996 Manders, the coatings and inks concern, is looking for an inks acquisition and is also planning to start exporting to North America. 22-Mar-1996 Stanford Rook Holdings is starting trials of its tuberculosis drug in London and South Africa and hopes to start marketing in 1998. 22-Mar-1996 Brunner Mond, the soda ash maker, is considering a stock market flotation but will not make a final decision until it has finished building a combined heat and power plant at its Northwich site. 21-Mar-1996 Vanguard Medica, the pharmaceutical development company, plans to raise about £30m in a flotation in May. 20-Mar-1996 Albright & Wilson is to further rationalise its surfactants business with disposals and closures. 20-Mar-1996 Cookson is buying Engineered Polymers Corp, the US maker of structural foam plastics and pallets, for £57m. 16-Mar-1996 Phytopharm, the plant-based medicines concern, is to float in London next month to raise over £12m. 16-Mar-1996 Holliday Chemical is now concentrating on three areas - pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, colours, and inorganic chemicals - and has closed inefficient plants and cut staffing levels by 66. 13-Mar-1996 Laporte, the speciality chemicals concern, plans to cut 40% of its Luton head office staff and to sell businesses worth about 10% of sales. 12-Mar-1996 The merger of Swiss drugs companies, Ciba and Sandoz, could result in 600 job losses in the UK. 12-Mar-1996 Johnson Matthey is opening a titanium sponge plant in Salt Lake City, Utah, as part of a three year $40m investment strategy for titanium. 11-Mar-1996 Leading chemical industry executives have been lobbying the government to tone down its opposition to a single European currency as they fear that opting out would damage the competitiveness of UK industry. 08-Mar-1996 Cookson is to further increase its product and geographical coverage with the announcement of over £100m worth of acquisitions over coming weeks. 08-Mar-1996 Glaxo Wellcome may be about to give up its fight to keep patent protection for Zantac in the US until 2002, as non-branded competitors are likely to be launched in July 1997. 07-Mar-1996 ICI is planning to make some acquisitions in Asia in order to boost its balance sheet as analysts have warned it may be vulnerable to a takeover. 04-Mar-1996 SCM Chemicals has awarded Babcock International a contract for a £75m expansion of its chloride process titanium dioxide plant at Stallingborough. 04-Mar-1996 Hickson International is about to sell its South African speciality chemicals operation to a local consortium. 02-Mar-1996 ICI is selling the aerosol and cleaning products operations of the recently-acquired Grow Group to Sherwin-Williams of the US for at least £35m. 02-Mar-1996 SmithKline Beecham is to restructure by cutting 400 jobs and closing 10% of its manufacturing sites, including a reduction in size at its Crawley plant, although it will increase the size of its plant in Worthing. 01-Mar-1996 Medeva, the pharmaceuticals concern, is on the look-out for acquisitions having just arranged a £125m five-year credit facility. 01-Mar-1996 Glaxo Wellcome has rationalised its Italian facilities with a management buy-out at its Pomezia plant. 01-Mar-1996 Scotia has ended a marketing arrangement with Pharmacia of Sweden which leaves it without a partner for Tarabetic, the diabetes drug. 27-Feb-1996 Cookson Matthey Ceramics plans to spend £8m on two factories in Malaysia and India to make zircon opacifier. 23-Feb-1996 Cortecs International has announced an agreement with Osteometer BioTech and the Centre for Clinical Basic Research, both of Denmark, to jointly develop an oral version of testosterone for male HRT. 23-Feb-1996 Shell Chemicals plans to link up with BASF to build a plant in either the Netherlands or Germany to produce 250,000 tonnes a year of polypropylene and 550,000 tonnes a year of styrene monomer. 22-Feb-1996 SmithKline Beecham is making a £250m provision to cover two disputes in the US - one concerning antitrust pricing and the other for alleged false claims for payment from the Medicare and Medicaid health service schemes. 21-Feb-1996 Courtaulds is investing £120m to double output of Tencel, the wood-pulp based fabric, at its Grimsby plant. 21-Feb-1996 Pharmacia & Upjohn is to close its Crawley plant, with the loss of about 200 jobs. 17-Feb-1996 Amersham International has won FDA approval for its heart imaging drug called Myoview. 13-Feb-1996 Glaxo Wellcome is to sell its 311C90 migraine drug to Zeneca to comply with competition requirements following the creation of the merged group. 09-Feb-1996 Scotia's Swedish operation has granted Astra the right to use some of its specialist lipids in return for future royalties from resulting products. 09-Feb-1996 ICI is planning a £60m expansion of its Dumfries polyester film plant, where it will be able to produce 20,000 tonnes a year with the main market being the packaging industry. 02-Feb-1996 Celltech has abandoned research on an asthma drug, codenamed CDP840, which was expected to be a major earner for the company. 02-Feb-1996 Shire Pharmaceuticals Group expects to raise £35m from a flotation and will use £20m on development. 26-Jan-1996 ML Laboratories plans an institutional placing to generate £25m for development. 26-Jan-1996 Shire Pharmaceuticals Group is to develop and market galanthamine, the Alzheimer's treatment, in a deal with Johnson & Johnson's Belgian operation, Janssen Pharmaceutics. 25-Jan-1996 Rhone-Poulenc Rorer is cutting 140 sales and marketing jobs at its Eastbourne and Loughborough sites, in a rationalisation following its acquisition of Fisons. 24-Jan-1996 Zeneca is planning a major restructuring of its manufacturing and distribution, but job losses are unlikely to hit R&D. 24-Jan-1996 Therexsys plans to raise up to £10m in a private placement and expects to launch its first gene-therapy products by 2002. 24-Jan-1996 Lawrence has disposed of over half its stake in Amberley Group, the minerals and speciality chemicals company, raising £1m. 24-Jan-1996 Chiroscience has reported good final test results for its levobupivacaine local anaesthetic. 20-Jan-1996 Elan of Ireland has won FDA approval for Naprelan, the anti-arthritis drug it developed with Wyeth Ayerst Laboratories. 10-Jan-1996 The information below comes from the UK Activity Report. Click here for further details Copyright UK Business Park 1995-2007