Ardena launches Ardena LSI

Belgian CDMO Ardena has launched Ardena LSI, which it describes as “a new business arm dedicated to the sale of chemical ingredients and intermediates for the life science industry”. This follows on from two major acquisitions and a new corporate HQ in 2018.

Ardena LSI will market ingredients, including 1,4-butanediol diglycidyl ether (BDDE) and 1-ethyl-3-3(3-dimethylaminopropyl) carbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC-HCl) ultra-pure for use in drug products, other healthcare applications and cosmetics products like dermal fillers. These will all be made at the company’s GMP plants in Europe.

Ardena is headquartered in Ghent and was formed in 2017 from the merger of Pharmavize in Belgium, and Crystallics and Analytical Biochemical Laboratory in the Netherlands, under the ownership of Mentha Capital. Last year, it made two strategic acquisitions as part of what CEO Harry Christiaens called part of our “wider strategy to become one of Europe’s leading one-source-contractors for the development of clinical supplies”.

ChemConnection, which was formerly part of Organon and Merck Sharp & Dohme, is a contract manufacturer of APIs at up to 30 kg scale and of nanomedicines, mainly to biotechs and mid-sized pharmaceutical companies. The company is based at the Pivot Park life sciences campus in Oss, Netherlands.

Syntagon, which specialises in APIs, excipients and GMP chromatographic purification processes, became Ardena’s first acquisition outside the Benelux region in May 2018. It brought in sites in Sweden and Latvia and taking the total to six, while also enabling the company to manufacture APIs in batches of up to 100 kg. I

n November, Ardena, which now employs 250, moved to an expanded headquarters building, having increased its staff level to 250 and experienced >20%/year organic growth. The stated aim was to “free up space for additional laboratories at our other sites and further expand our capabilities”.