SK Pharmteco has announced a two-phase, $35 million investment to boost both capacity and capabilities at its SK Biotek subsidiary’s manufacturing plant at Swords, Dublin. This is due online in 2024, the campus’s 60th anniversary as a small molecule API manufacture, and will lead to a 50% total increase in capacity.

CDMO Onyx Scientific has opened a second facility at its headquarters site in Sunderland, UK.This doubles its footprint and allows for expansion of all CMC activities, including additional GMP facilities that increases capacity for GMP and commercial API manufacturing capacity by 50%.

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.

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.  

Indian-based CDMO Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS) is to invest about £55 million to expand two sites in the UK. It will expand its antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) capabilities at Grangemouth in Scotland and new API infrastructure at Morpeth in north-east England.

Following a detailed review, Johnson Matthey has concluded that the potential returns from its Battery Materials business “will not be adequate to justify further investment”. It will therefore seek to sell all or parts of the business.

Although demand has been growing strongly, the company said, “so is competition from alternative technologies and other manufacturers” and the market is becoming commoditised. JM had explored partnerships in the field but found that “our capital intensity is too high compared with other more established large-scale, low-cost producers”.