Thermo Fisher buys GSK Irish site

Thermo Fisher Scientific, owner of Patheon, has agreed to acquire a drug substance manufacturing site in Cork, Ireland, from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for about €90 million. The deal should be completed by the end of 2019, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing condition. The site will then become part of Thermo Fisher’s Laboratory Products & Services segment, within the Pharma Services business.

The Cork site employs over 400 and has 270 m³ of reactor capacity spread across ten production buildings. It makes complex, specialised APIs for indications including childhood cancer, depression and Parkinson’s disease. It also has an R&D pilot plant and lab infrastructure for the process development, scale-up and physical characterisation of APIs. Thermo Fisher plans to expand it.

“The GSK Cork site will enhance our API offering by expanding our development and commercial capabilities to provide much-needed capacity for APIs currently in development,” said Michel Lagarde, senior vice president and president of Pharma Services. It will continue to produce APIs under a multi-year supply agreement for GSK, which has not commented on its own reasons for selling.

This is just the latest in a series of organic and acquisition-led investments by Thermo Fisher. Most recently, it acquired Brammer Bio in viral vector manufacturing. It is also investing $150 million to expand its sterile three fill-finish sites in Italy and the US, and plans to complete the $50 million expansion of its St. Louis biologics facility later this year.