🏭 The Column: October 10, 2025

Good morning. If you happen to know something about MXDA or PET catalysis, please respond to this email! Hope everyone has a great weekend.

European MXDA is on pause

Meta-xylylenediamine (MXDA) is new to me. I hadn’t heard of it until someone mentioned it to me last week. I did a little digging and didn’t find much. But what I did find still interests me: MXDA is an aromatic diamine with very limited production—from what I can tell, only Mitsubishi Chemical actually manufactures this stuff (they commercialized it in the late 1970s), and they do it exclusively in Japan. It’s been quietly used in high-performance coatings, adhesives, and related systems for decades as a sort of “premium” curing agent in cases where a conventional aliphatic or fully aromatic amine doesn’t meet the mark. Anyways, apparently the largest end market for MXDA is in Europe, so Mitsubishi started building a new plant in the Netherlands in 2022. But now, citing delays, increased labor costs, and “changes in the MXDA market environment”, Mitsubishi is pausing the project. [LINK]

The US government is taking stakes

Over the last 4 months the US government has started acting less like a passive regulator or subsidy-provider and more like a capital investor in strategically vital sectors (e.g. lithium, rare earths, semiconductors). It was MP Materials in July, Intel in August, and now both Trilogy Metals and Lithium Americas in October; it’s a big shift—instead of using strictly carrots and sticks, the US is directly acquiring parts of the means of production. The hope is that by sharing upside (via warrants, equity, offtake guarantees) the government can better steer private investment, internalize externalities (security, supply chain sovereignty), and ensure alignment of incentives. [LINK]

A new PET catalyst

PET, aka recycling number 1, is one of the world’s favorite plastics. It makes up pretty much all your water bottles and the polyester in your clothes. We make a whopping 90,000 KTA of this stuff every year. Anyways, nearly all of it is made using antimony (Sb)-based homogeneous catalysis (e.g. antimony trioxide or antimony acetate). Antimony works great, but it’s a heavy metal with toxicity and regulatory baggage, and it’s also a strategically tight element (China controls most of the supply and has started restricting exports). For decades researchers have tried to swap it out, but nobody has managed to find a scalable alternative—until now! Clariant says it’s figured it out with titanium while simultaneously claiming lower reaction temps (lowering OpEx is a great pitch if you’re asking someone to spend CapEx). [LINK]

Other Things Happened:

The Carlyle Group is acquiring a majority stake in BASF’s coatings business at an $8.9bn valuation. LG Chem is buying Toray out of their Hungary-based battery separator JV for $204m. Sibur is expanding its synthetic rubber catalyst capacity in Tatarstand, Russia. The U.S. government is taking a 5% stake in the Lithium Americas Thacker Pass project. Lion Elastomers is closing its butadiene-based elastomers plant in Orange, Texas. Borealis is expanding its XLPE production in Sweden. Sojitz invested in Genomatica in hopes brining bio-based nylon-6 to market faster. Givaudan, a flavor and fragrance company, just started construction of a new plant for the food and beverage industry outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. Dow Chemical had a fire at its polyethylene plant in Freeport, Texas. Clariant unveiled some new titanium-based catalysts for polyester production. The 2025 chemistry Nobel was awarded to the developers of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Plastic Energy is selling its plastic pyrolysis by-product as a carbon black substitute. Ineos is shutting down two more plants in Europe.