Contract wins show Sweden is emerging CMO hub says Kemwell

The new deal  - announced this week – will see Kemwell make drug products on Mercury’s behalf at a facility in Uppsala, Sweden that the contract manufacturing organisation bought from US drug giant Pfizer in 2006​.​

Kemwell business development manager Leo Fallgren told Outsourcing-pharma.com the deal is one of a number of contracts the firm has one for the tablet, suppository and capsule production facility in recent months.

”Recently we have signed three other manufacturing agreements with both Big, Medium and Small sized Pharmas. This​ contract with Mercury is a very valuable for us and a most interesting contract in manufacturing but also a proof that Sweden is a competitive country in pharmaceutical production.”​

Fallgren also told us that despite the flurry of contracts, Kemwell still has additional capacity at the facility for new business.

“We are open to all clients in Pharma not only if Cinven [Mercury Pharma’s owner] will give us more but also if we have clients where we can meet the expectations and needs in other and more projects to come as well.”​

He also said that Kemwell is open to the idea of expanding its offering to accommodate new manufacturing work, explaining that: “We are very interested and open for expanding the capabilities in the future, we do have areas free for expanding the capabilities​.”

Sweden​

The suggestion that is seen as an increasingly attractive destination for pharmaceutical manufacturing is supported by a number of high profile investments in recent years.

In 2009, Pfizer​ set up a biologic drug production facility in Strangnas in western Sweden and in 2011 US molecular diagnostics company Cepheid built a plant in Stockholm​ to serve the European, Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian markets.