AGC acquires in two fields

Japan’s AGC has completed the acquisition of Malgrat Pharma Chemicals (MPC), a maker of synthetic APIs based in Spain, from Boheringer Ingelheim. This had been announced in December 2018. The company has also agreed to acquire the Advanced Dielectric division (ADD) of Taconic, a US-based firm active in the electronics sector, subject to regulatory approval. Both are seen as part of the ‘AGC plus’ management policy.

MPC gives AGC its first FDA-registered site in Europe in the synthetic pharmaceutical CDMO business. As a result, the company said, it will be able to “manufacture and process intermediates for synthetic pharmaceuticals all the way through active ingredients, in Europe”. Until now, it had been supplying its fluorine technology and in-house drug discovery capabilities from Japan.

MPC operates to cGMP and has a long track record in pharmaceutical production, with production lines that can handle everything from development to commercial scale. AGC added that it “will continue to actively invest in this field so as to be able to provide globally-unified high-quality services to customers in both the synthetic drug and biopharmaceutical businesses”.

Taconic’s ADD, meanwhile, manufactures super high-performance rigid copper-clad laminates (CCLs), which AGC describes as an enabling printed circuit board technology for radio frequency and microwave electronics, including for automotive and mobile applications. The part of the IDD it intends to buy makes industrial composite films for applications in semiconductor manufacturing and other sectors.

AGC said that this acquisition, alongside the acquisition of Park Electrochemical’s electronics business in 2018, will help establish its business platform in the high-end rigid CCL market, “which is expected to grow significantly with the spread of 5G and autonomous driving”. The firm will also combine its fluorine and glass materials with Taconic’s industrial composite films and technologies.

The ‘AGC plus’ policy identifies the life sciences, electronics and mobility-related business of all kinds as strategic and investments are being targeted particularly in these fields. In the life sciences, AGC aims to achieve sales of nearly $600 million/year in this field by 2020 and nearly $900 million by 2025. In recent years, it had acquired two other CDMO companies in Biomeva and CMC Biologics.