Johnson Matthey (London; www.matthey.com) has announced that their global Catalysis and Chiral Technologies technology business unit, JMCCT, which provides services in heterogeneous, homogeneous, chiral and biocatalytic technologies for customers in the pharmaceutical, fine chemical and agrochemical industries, is expanding its existing specialty ligand manufacturing capability to include commercial-scale manufacturing up to 100 kilograms. The company has a diverse specialty ligands portfolio, and this expansion is largely focused on the Buchwald ligands from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for customers throughout Europe, Asia and the United States.
The Buchwald ligands offered by JMCCT are a class of bulky and electron-rich dialkylbiaryl monophosphine ligands, which are used for the in situ generation of active catalysts. These ligands are used for coupling reactions in the manufacture of both pharmaceuticals and specialty chemicals and are more commonly offered at a research scale for use in the laboratory. Three separate expansion investments have now been made, focused on a new facility in Taloja, India last year and further expansion underway in Royston, U.K.