Dive Brief:
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Patheon N.V., a major pharmaceutical contractor, has bought a manufacturing facility in Florence, South Carolina from a subsidiary of the Swiss giant Roche, the company disclosed in a Nov. 28 statement.
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The 300,000 square-foot site will give Patheon additional manufacturing capacity for producing active pharmaceutical ingredients, including "highly potent" compounds. Financial details were not disclosed.
- Last November, Roche announced a restructuring of its small molecule manufacturing network, indicating it planned to close the South Carolina site along with three others in Ireland, Spain and Italy.
Dive Insight:
Patheon also agreed to a "multi-year supply arrangement” with Roche, which it expects will help offset the costs of running the facility while it incorporates the site into its own client network.
The Florence facility will give Patheon more capacity in solid-state chemistry, micronization and commercial spray drying. Site reactors range in size from 50,000 to 11,000 liters, which will help Patheon supply APIs from clinical scale up through commercial scale manufacturing.
As part of the transaction, Patheon will also become the new employer of roughly 200 scientific and manufacturing staff.
In lining up a buyer in Patheon, Roche can meet its goal of divesting, rather than shuttering, facilities marked in its 2015 restructuring decision.
Roche sold its Leganes, Spain site to the contract manufacturer Famar in June, but so far has been unable to find a buyer for its Clarecastle, Ireland facility
Like other big pharmas, Roche is trimming its small molecule manufacturing network as it shifts focus to stepped-up production of biologics.