Alongside city and Commonwealth of Virginia officials, Ampac Fine Chemicals (AFC) has announced that it will invest over $25 million to expand the capabilities of its former Boehringer Ingelheim plant at Petersburg Industrial Park in Petersburg. The site, which Ampac acquired in 2016 and brought back into operation in 2019, was chosen over others in California and Texas

CDMOs Sterling Pharma Solutions and Novasep have both made announcements in the high potency arena in the past week. The former has signed a manufacturing deal with oncology specialist OncoTex, while the latter is expanding its main high potency API (HPAPI) site at Le Mans.

Lonza its to expand its two-year collaboration with Moderna to manufacture the drug substance for Moderna’ COVID-19 vaccine. This will lead to further expansion at its main site in Visp, Switzerland, as will another small molecule complex, which includes a dedicated line for antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs) for an unnamed customer.

Pharmaceutical CDMO AMRI has invested both in terms of scale and compound handling capabilities and new expert personnel to address orphan and rare disease products. No figure has been disclosed of the sum involved.

At its headquarters site in Albany, New York, AMRI has added additional suites for 10-15 kg batch sizes. At Grafton, Wisconsin, it has expanded its hydrogenation, filtering and drying and analytical capabilities, the latter including LC-MS and GC-MS instruments, as well as new experts. The company has also expanded at Glasgow, UK.

As part of its expansion plans for this year, Charnwood Molecular, a UK-based pre-clinical discovery CRO to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology market, has become the sole occupier of a three-storey laboratory facility at Charnwood Campus in Loughborough. This is being funded with support from European private equity fund Synova, which recently took a stake in the company.

In a pre-close trading update for the financial year ended 31 March 2021, Johnson Matthey (JM) CEO Robert MacLeod revealed that: “We have commenced a strategic review of Health, as we continue to focus resources to maximise value for our shareholders”.

Full results will be announced on 27 May but it is known that Health, which offers API custom manufacturing services, controlled substances, catalysts and generics, generated sales of £223 million, about 5% of the total sale. The division’s full-year operating performance is expected to be above the prior year.

German CDMO KD Pharma, which is one of the world’s largest producers of omega-3 fatty acids has acquired the assets of former CDMO RohnerChem at Pratteln, near Basel, Switzerland (pictured), and hired some of the former team. Terms were not disclosed.

KD said that it aims to become an even bigger player and that the site’s “unique chemical processes and technological capabilities” enabled it “to manufacture difficult, multi-step pharmaceutical intermediates and APIs. This is a natural fit with our strategy.”