Honeywell Sells Pharma Chemicals Plant to Sigma

Honeywell Specialty Materials has sold its Iropharm pharmaceutical chemicals facility in Arklow, Ireland, to Sigma-Aldrich for an undisclosed sum.

The deal signals the completion of Honeywell's exit from the active pharmaceutical ingredients business. It is also the latest in a run of acquisitions by Sigma-Aldrich's SAFC fine and pharmaceutical chemicals division that includes the purchases of Tetrionics, Ultrafine, and JRH Biosciences.

Sigma-Aldrich said earlier this year that it was in the market for manufacturing assets (C&EN, Feb. 20, page 20). ???The acquisition of Iropharm fulfills our promise to add commercial-scale cGMP manufacturing capacity and continue our strategy of providing customers with state-of-the-art technologies,??? SAFC President Frank Wicks says.

The Arklow facility, purchased by Honeywell from Iropharm in 1997, has reactor capacity of 90,000 L and annual revenues of roughly $16 million. It features one of the world???s few multicolumn commercial-scale simulated moving bed (SMB) chromatographic separation units, Sigma-Aldrich notes.

Honeywell went on a fine chemicals buying spree in the late 1990s, also purchasing Riedel-de Haen and Pharmaceutical Fine Chemicals. It divested many of its assets in the sector in 2002.