As part of its ‘Pivot to Growth’ strategy, generics giant Teva has announced that it intends to divest its API business, including its R&D, manufacturing and commercial activities, within 1H 2025. This is subject to finding a buyer at the right price, the company stressed.

The business sells APIs to third parties, plus certain contract manufacturing services and an out-licensing platform offering a portfolio of products to other pharmaceutical companies through its Medis affiliate. In Q4 2023, API sales were $153 million, 9% down on Q2 2022.

Italian CDMO Olon Group has announces the ongoing construction of a high potency API (HPAPI) suite at the site in Concord, Ohio, which hosts its centre of excellence for early development of APIs. This adds to the commercial-scale capabilities of sites at Segrate and Rodano, near Milan, Italy, where Olon has invested about €40 million in the last few years.

CDMO EuroAPI has initiated what it calls “a pivotal collaboration” with SpiroChem, a Basel-based CRO that is specialised in chemical process R&D, or route scouting. They will seek to offer consolidated CRO-CDMO services, “ensuring that industrialisation constraints for small molecules are integrated from the initial step of drug design, thereby speeding up the process”.

In response to growing demand worldwide, WuXi AppTec has commissioned two new peptide plants, one each at its Changzhou and Taixing sites in China. Both use digital operation systems with automated solvent delivery, in order to optimise production consistency, minimise human errors and reduce production cycle time.

This investment will increase the company’s total solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) reactor volume to 32,000 litres. It also marks the official launch of Taixing as WuXi AppTec’s fifth API production sites.

Japan’s Ube Chemical has decided to merge by absorption API Corporation (APIC), the CDMO operation it acquired from Mitsubishi Chemical in December 2022. This will take effect on 1 December 2024 and is expected to have only a minimal impact on Ube’s consolidated earnings.

The company said that it made this decision in order to “further promote the sharing of the proprietary high-level manufacturing and quality control technologies of both companies, accelerate the development of new technologies, expand supply chain networks and leverage the existing bases of both companies”.

Italian CDMO Olon has opened its new R&D centre at its industrial plant and headquarters in Rodano, near Milan. This will be mainly dedicated to the development of APIs for the innovator and generic markets. It cost €10 million and will create 50 new jobs, bringing the total to 350 out of the 2,300 total.

Swiss fine chemical manufacturer Valsynthese has entered into a manufacturing services agreement, under which it will host Grignard reagents production units based on the proprietary MgFlow Technology of Belgium’s Chemium and offer integrated services based on it. Chemium will commercialise ready-to-use Grignards through its Swiss subsidiary.