Plant purchase
Alexion Pharmaceuticals has purchased Dow’s biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Smithfield, Rhode Island.  Alexion will use the 55,000 square-foot facility for Soliris (eculizumab), its lead product candidate for parozysmal nocturnal hemoglubinuria.  Dow acquiried the facility in 2000 with plans to enter the market for mammalian cell culture, but market conditions did not justify further investment and the plant was closed in 2004.

CO2 plant
BOC is building the only CO2 (carbon dioxide) plant in the Northeast in Volney, New York.  The plant should have a capacity of 600 tons/day, capturing byproduct CO2 from the Permolex International/NEB ethanol plant that is being built in a former brewery.  BOC plans to provide CO2 to customers including major food and beverage and chemical companies throughout New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New England.

Unexpected outage
Nova Chemicals’ Corunna, Ontario, Canada facility is up and running again after an unexpected stoppage when a contractor accidentally pressed a stop switch.  The plant was back to normal operations within two weeks and the impact to earnings should be within the company’s $11 million estimate.

Hurricane preps complete
DuPont’s project to protect its DeLisle, Mississippi TiO2 (titanium dioxide) plant from hurricanes has been completed ahead of schedule and under budget.  The 300,000 ton/year plant was badly damaged by flooding during Hurricane Katrina in August, 2005.  The company added a 12-foot wall to the plant’s existing 20-foot earthen levee, for a cost of approximately $12.5 million.  The site resumed manufacturing operations in January and the force majeure was lifted in April.  The site is running at near capacity.

Plant explosion
Chemtura’s plant in Elmira, Ontario, Canada suffered a small explosion.  The explosion was isolated to a single building and the plant was safely shut down after the incident.  The plant came up within a few days.  The plant employs about 230 people and produces polyolefins and crop protection chemicals on its 24 acre campus.

$20 million orders
Praj Technology has been contracted to supply technology and machinery to two plants being set up in the Cilion Group in California.  Cilion plans to set up a total of eight ethanol plants and has selected Praj for two plants where machinery orders are yet to be released.  The first of two plants with a capacity of more than 55 million gallons/year of corn-based ethanol are scheduled to go on stream by mid 2007.  Cilion projects having a total capacity of 440 million gallons/year in 2008.  Cilion believes it can produce environmentally friendlier ethanol in California at a lower cost than ethanol produced at traditional Midwest corn ethanol plants and delivered to California.

Production begins
Natco Pharma Ltd. has commenced commercial production at its finished dosages pharmaceutical formulations unit in Dehradun.  The unit is planned to achieve a capacity level of 300 million tablets/year, with the project implemented in stages. 

Feasibility study
The United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) will help fund the feasibility study for setting up a $4 billion national gas grid project in India.  USTDA agreed to fund $690,000 for the study.  The feasibility study will be divided into six phases that will evaluate technologies and practices for the construction, operation and management of the proposed natural gas transmission pipeline network project.  The grid will involved constructing approximately 7,900 kilometers of line, a number of compression stations, metering stations, gas storage control systems and communications.