Dive Brief:
- New Jersey contract manufacturer Cambrex has opened a new pilot API production facility near Milan, Italy, continuing a recent push to expand its production capacity.
- Aldo Magnini, managing director at Cambrex Milan, said the new plant would support its small-scale volume offerings for supply of niche markets. Cambrex currently manufactures more than 70 generic APIs for its pharmaceutical customers, Magnini said.
- VisionGain, a U.K.-based consultancy, predicts the Italian pharma contract manufacturing market to grow from a baseline of $2.0 billion in 2014 to $2.7 billion by 2020.
Dive Insight:
As cost pressures and post-merger consolidations continue to drive restructuring in the pharma industry, contract manufacturers are stepping in.
Cambrex's new Italian plant has been designed for small-scale manufacturing, creating batches from 1 kg to 15 kg to support abbreviated new drug applications (Cambrex contracts with generic drugmakers) or supply API for smaller markets.
Cambrex anticipates it will upgrade the facility, which is currently considered a pilot plant, to enable production of Class 3/4 high potency products sometime in 2017.
This isn't Cambrex's only investment this year. Early in September, the company invested $9 million to expand its Swedish plant in Karlskoga. And later in the month, the CMO agreed to acquire PharmaCore for $25 million to bring on board clinical stage API manufacturing capabilities.
Some concerns have been raised about the effect declining sales for Gilead's Harvoni (sofosbuvir/ledipasvir) — which Cambrex makes for the California biotech — might have on the CMO. The concerns aren't without cause, as sales to Gilead accounted for 34.5% of Cambrex's consolidated sales last year, according to a regulatory filing.
Sales grew by 12% year over year in the second quarter, however, and Cambrex has upped its sales guidance for the year.