Seeking Pharma Bright Spots

Fine chemicals manufacturers came to the CPhI pharmaceutical ingredients trade show in Paris last week hoping to drum up customers and keep a modest business recovery going. But booth traffic was modest. For the 35,000 attendees and 2,250 exhibitors, the crush came instead in the form of taxi, bus, and metro jams, plus a rail strike.

The news from the companies managing to do business there was that the best opportunities are in select areas, such as biologics, or in specialized technology or capacity offerings, such as finished-product formulation.

In biologics, executives from Catalent Pharma Solutions arrived in Paris having just acquired Redwood Bioscience, a University of California, Berkeley, spin-off that offers antibody-drug conjugate technology. The acquisition was the New Jersey-based company’s first since its initial public offering in July, but it is expected to soon make more. Meanwhile, IDT Biologika announced at the show that it has finished building a large facility for lyophilizing and filling biologic and vaccine products in its home city of Dessau, Germany.

Targeting both biologics and small molecules, Switzerland’s SGS Life Science Services promoted a multi-million-dollar investment in its testing lab network. Later this month SGS will open a lab in Carson, Calif., that will place it close to West Coast pharma and biotech customers for the first time. In 2015, the company will debut lab expansions near Paris and in Shanghai, according to Frédéric Gaussens, the firm’s vice president for strategy and business development.

Next month, France’s Minakem will start up a plant in Memphis to make building blocks for agrochemicals and cosmetics, CEO Frédéric Gauchet told C&EN. The company is also increasing capacity at its Leuna, Germany, facility where it is validating a new active pharmaceutical ingredient for a Russian customer.

Patheon, a unit of DPx Holdings, announced that it will invest $159 million to expand its operations in Greenville, N.C., by the end of 2019, adding nearly 500 jobs. In the process, Greenville will become the home of Patheon’s North American sterile drug facility. In late September, Patheon acquired St. Louis-based Gallus BioPharmaceuticals, a contract manufacturer specializing in biologics.