Dow has announced plans to expand its alkoxylation capacity in the US and Europe in 2024 and 2025. The investments are backed by supply agreements with customers and are being made to meet 10-15%/year growth in end markets including home and personal care, industrial and institutional cleaning, pharmaceuticals and crop protection.
Bachem has entered a strategic collaboration under which it will provide the infrastructure and expertise to implement Eli Lilly & Company’s novel manufacturing technology for oligonucleotide APIs. It will also supply R&D and production at its site in Bubendorf, Switzerland, to make GMP-grade material using this technology.
Sumitomo Chemical has announced plans to build a new plant for APIs and intermediates to come onstream in September 2024 at its Oita works on the southern tip of Honshu. This comes in response to growing demand from the small molecule sector. No financial details were given.
Oita, the company said, “can manufacture a wide variety of APIs and intermediates that require complex chemical reactions and also flexibly scale from development to commercialisation”. It is also compliant with EU, US and Japanese GMP standards.
Following negotiations begun in September 2021, PharmaZell, a German-based supplier of speciality APIs, and Novasep, a CDMO focused on complex small molecules and ADCs, have closed their merger under the majority ownership of Bridgepoint Group. Former PharmaZell CEO Dr Sylke Hassel (pictured) will be CEO, while former Novasep CEO Michel Spagnol has joined the board of directors.
Japan’s AGC has announced plans for a new, 7,500 m2 building at the site of its AGC Pharma Chemicals Europe CDMO operation in Spain. Costing about $100 million, this is scheduled to begin operation in 1H 2024 and will add 30% to the site’s capacity. This comes on top of a 30% increase in capacity announced in April 2020.
Sanofi has announced that newly established API manufacturer EuroAPI will begin trading on the Euronext Paris on 6 May, subject to shareholder approval at a meeting three days before. Following this, EuroAPI will operate independently.
“This important step towards our listing is a key milestone for EuroAPI and is part of the deployment of our strategy and our independence from Sanofi,” said CEO Karl Rotthier.
In order to “maximise customer centricity and market focus” and continue an ongoing transition into “a system solutions partner for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries”, Evonik has divided its Health Care business into three distinct units.
Drug Substance encompasses the company’s CDMO services for active APIs, including HPAPIs, and intermediates plus generics. It is headed by Dr Stefan Randl, an industry veteran of 15 years who has been leading projects in mRNA and gene therapies since 2020.
