Roche, which has been trying for two years to offload four small-molecule manufacturing plants around the world, will sell one in Spain to Recipharm in a deal that will save another 200 jobs.
As part of the arrangement to take over the plant in Leganés, Spain near Madrid, the Swedish CDMO has won a long-term manufacturing agreement to supply Roche with a number of solid dose products, a provision the Swiss drugmaker has used to find buyers for two other plants.
No financial terms were offered, but Recipharm said the plant will add €35 million (about $42 million) annually to its revenues. The CDMO, which agreed to keep 200 workers at the facility, said it will be able to coordinate work with a plant it already has in Parets near Barcelona, and the deal will allow it to realize “optimization opportunities” with Recipharm’s solids manufacturing network.
This is the third of four plants that Roche has sold since announcing in November 2015 that it would close facilities and eliminate 1,200 jobs in cost-cutting measures, even as it shifted more production toward manufacturing targeted drugs. Roche also has found buyers for plants in the U.S. and Segrate, Italy. Only a facility in Clarecastle, Ireland has been shuttered after a buyer couldn’t be found.
When the company announced it was changing the trajectory of its manufacturing investments, Roche said it would spend about $300 million to build a new plant to manufacture targeted, high-potency small-molecule drugs at its massive site in Kaiseraugst near its Basel, Switzerland where it has about 10,400 employees.
Last year, Patheon took over an API plant in Florence, South Carolina, again saving 200 jobs and winning a supply agreement from Roche.
Earlier this month, Roche said it had completed the sale of a solid and liquid formulation facility in Segrate, to French CMO Delpharm, which also reached a deal to supply the Swiss pharma giant with products produced at the plant and agreed to keep an unspecified number of jobs.
By Eric Palmer
Source: Fierce Pharma
The company plans to pour more than $500 million in additional funds into its active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) plant in Raheen, Limerick County, the country’s Industrial Development Agency (IDA) said. The new funding brings the company’s total investment in the site to 927 million euros ($1 billion).
“If in 2005 someone told you that two-thirds of our industry would be driven on the R&D side by emerging biopharma—it would be unthinkable. If one were to project that trend forward, what it would suggest is that we could have a day when we do this talk, say in 2027 or 2028, where 80% of the industry’s pipeline is coming from emerging companies.”
The German healthcare and agrochemicals giant told Reuters that in future its pharma pipeline will focus on cardiovascular disease, neurology, rare diseases and immunology, while de-emphasizing women’s health, a field it first focused on with the acquisition of the former women’s health specialist Schering in 2006.
