Agilent Technologies, a major player in analytical and clinical laboratory services, has agreed to acquire Canadian biotech and pharmaceutical CDMO Biovectra from HIG Capital in a $925 million deal that is expected to close before 2025. This covers all Biovectra’s employees and sites in Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia.

“The acquisition expand Agilent’s end-to-end biopharma solutions with Biovectra’s biologics capabilities to accelerate drug development and manufacturing,” the two companies stated. Industry rumour had previously linked Biovectra with Thermo Fisher.

Following public consultation, CEFIC has presented a paper with six recommendations in support of the European Commission’s proposals to update the existing EU regulation on pharmaceutical precursors.  These are:

CordenPharma is to spend about €900 million over the next three years to expand its peptide technology platform, with investments on both sides of the Atlantic. This will be the largest strategic investment to date for the company, which is owned by pan-European private equity firm Astorg and aims to achieve €1 billion/year in sales from peptides

Navin Molecular, an Indian-based CDMO that is part of Navin Fluorine, has announced plans to build $35 million, 9,000 m² multi-purpose GMP plant at Dewas. This is due to be completed in Q2 225. The facility will add 200 m³ of capacity, taking the total at Dewas to 420. It will support existing commercial-scale projects, as well as meeting future demands, the company said.

French-based CDMO EuroAPI has reached an agreement with Sanofi to finance the implementation of its Focus-27 restructuring programme through a €200 million perpetual subordinated hybrid bond. Sanofi, from which EuroAPI was originally spun out, remains its main shareholder and customer. It also agreed in principle to reserve minimum available capacities for selected products manufactured by EuroAPI through a €54 million payment.

Following an expansion and qualification phase, the consortium formed by Wacker Chemie and CordenPharma in Germany officially entered ‘pandemic readiness’ for the production of mRNA-based vaccines as of 1 June. They are now in stand-by phase and will receive a fee from the government for keeping their capacity and expertise available for at least five years. In all, they will be able to produce 80 million doses/year at short notice.

Veranova has initiated a “significant” expansion of its ADC and highly potent compound development and manufacturing capabilities at Devens, Massachusetts, at a cost of about $30 million. The company said that this will address growing demand for strong US-based capacity for ADCs and other potent small molecules.