Skip to main content

Sterling buys Novartis site in Ireland

1st March 2022

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

CDMO Sterling Pharma Solutions has agreed to acquire Novartis’s 45-hectare Ringaskiddy campus near Cork, Ireland. Financial details of the sale, which is expected to close in Q4, 2022, have not been disclosed. All of the workforce will transfer to Sterling, bringing its global total to over 1,000.

The deal also includes an ongoing supply agreement for products Novartis has made at the site. The facilities include three API manufacturing buildings, plus facilities to support development and scale-up.  

Sterling CEO Kevin Cook said that the Ringaskiddy site “has a number of synergies with our current global facilities enabling us to continue our growth strategy in the small molecule market, as well as extending our capabilities in several key technological areas such as peptide manufacturing and large-scale chromatography”.

This continues several years of growth by acquisition and investment for the Sterling, which is based at Dudley near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK. Most notably, in October 2020, it acquired Alcami’s facility at Germantown, Wisconsin, boosting its API development and manufacturing capacity, particularly for complex and hazardous requirements, and including high potency.

In the same month, Sterling opened its Material Science Centre at Dudley. This added solid form services that it had formerly outsourced, including salt and co-crystal screening, polymorph screening, pre-formulation evaluation and crystallisation development, to its in-house capabilities. It also completed the build-out of its sterile manufacturing site in South Carolina.

Later in 2020, Sterling announced a new strategic partnership with ADC Biotechnology, a specialist in antibody-drug conjugates. This involved and unspecified but “significant” investment in ADC Bio with a view to acquiring completely.

In December 2021, Sterling announced the next phase of a multi-year investment strategy at Dudley. It planned to spend £10 million by mid-2022 on new process development laboratories and commercial-scale manufacturing equipment to meet growth in demand for small molecule API manufacturing.

UPL to split out specialities

Indian agrochemicals giant UPL has announced plans to transfer its speciality chemicals business, including agrochemical

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

AI for SAPs

Together with Algo Artis, Japan’s Nippon Shokubai has developed an algorithm-based means for the production

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Nippon Shokubai's API Facility in Japan

Nucleic acid API boost

Nippon Shokubai is to expand its GMP capacity for nucleic APIs tenfold It will install

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Flamma's facility in Dalian

Flamma opens in China

Italian CDMO Flamma Group has officially opened its new cGMP plant at Dalian, China, where

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

GL Chemtec has opened a new kilo lab

GL Chemtec completes kilo lab

CDMO GL Chemtec has announced the completion of a cGMP kilo lab at Oakville, Ontario

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Sterling's facility at Deeside, UK

CDMOs in ADC investments

Five CDMOs across the world have separately announced investments in antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs). Piramal Pharma is

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Afyren Neoxy plant

Milestones for two greentech firms

Afyren has achieved continuous production at its Afyren Neoxy plant at Clermont-Ferrand (pictured)

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Origin by Ocean derives its materials from sargassum

CABB in algae biorefinery deal

CABB has agreed a strategic partnership to establish a first-in-kind algae biorefinery at its site at Kokkola

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

First waste-based biosurfactants

Belgian start-up AmphiStar has launched what it claims are the first fully upcycled biobased surfactants

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Aether to supply Seqens

Indian firm Aether Industries has entered into a manufacturing agreement with Chemoxy International, a UK-based

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

New model for biocatalysts

BASF, the Austrian Research Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (ACIB) and the University of Graz in

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

CBE JU funds 31 more projects

The Circular Bio-based Europe Joint Undertaking (CBE JU), a €2 billion partnership between the EU

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Ribbon cutting ceremony at Lubrizol's new office

Lubrizol opens London office

Lubrizol has opened a new office in Hammersmith, London. This will be home to a

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Sudarshan to buy Heubach

India’s Sudarshan Chemical Industries (SCIL) has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the Heubach

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Alliance in natural fragrances

Sensegen, a US-based specialist in biotech-enabled fragrances, notably a new class of natural musk raw

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Croda breaks ground in China

Croda International has broken ground for a low-carbon, multi-purpose production facility on a greenfield site

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

CCT collaboration for Givaudan

Flavours and fragrances giant Givaudan has agreed a research collaboration for the development of sustainable

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

REACH Authorisation

Candidate List ‘reaches’ 250

The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has added three more substances to the Candidate List of

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington

Staff at Brenntag's newly acquired Czech site

CO2-free distribution site first

Brenntag has officially inaugurated what it claims to be the first CO2-emission-free chemical distribution site

Submitted by:

Andrew Warmington