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.

Vicky Xia and Joel Ranck of BioPlan share some first insights from the CPHI Annual Report

Having already benefitted from a COVID-based boom in the last two years, outsourcing of biologics globally is set to continue growing significantly in 2023. No production cliff is expected, even as COVID-related contracts reduce in scale, but the rapid growth of China’s biologics sector will slow.