Ex Cardinal Health contract biz reborn as Catalent
earlier this year has just been launched as an independent
operating company rebranded as Catalent Pharma Solutions.
US-based Catalent will continue offering the former Cardinal pharma services unit's core offering and will also focus on its child-resistant, senior-friendly and compliance-enhancing packaging designs, the newly created company said. The firm - whose name was created as a combination of 'catalyst' and 'talent' - will follow Cardinal's path to provide manufacturing and packaging services to pharma clients, using the proprietary technologies gained from the acquisition of the unit which include softgel capsule technology, Liqui-Gel formulations, and "fast dissolve" oral tablet technology Zydis. Last April, Cardinal completed the sale of its Pharmaceutical Technologies and Services (PTS) unit to private investment firm The Blackstone Group for $3.3bn (€2.5bn) in cash, two months after announcing it would divest the segment to focus on its health-care business. The former PTS division, which performed contract manufacturing and packaging for oral medicines and sterile liquids, generated $1.8bn in annual revenue, but Cardinal estimated that PTS remained an outlier strategically according to a company spokesperson in an earlier interview. "We also did not believe PTS was providing a sufficient return on invested capital to warrant our continued focus on this segment," Jeff Hendersen, Cardinal's CFO, said at a JPMorgan healthcare conference earlier this year. Catalent is headquartered in Somerset, New Jersey and employs around 10,000 staff at more than 30 facilities worldwide.
