Elan goes beyond delivery tech with oral solid dose service

The service, which will be premiered at CPhI 2010 in Paris, will cover all aspects of OSD development and production and allow customers to tailor manufacturing according to specific requirements.

Spokeswoman Fidelma Callanan told Outsourcing-pharma that: “We will be offering clients a new service in which they will be allowed to pick from any manufacturing services they require in solid oral dosage manufacture​.”

She explained that: “While we have been 40 years manufacturing products for companies, it has almost exclusively been related to a drug delivery contract into which the parties have entered.​

“We want to extend this more to specialised manufacturing which is not necessarily tied to drug delivery contracts.”​

Callanan predicted that demand for the new service would come from the increasing number of large pharmaceutical companies that are turning to third party contractors for scale-up and manufacturing.

She also suggested that smaller drugmakers stand to benefit from the offering as “there are many specialty pharmaceutical companies that do not have the capacity to manufacture - either in US or Europe​.”

EDT revenue boost​

News of the new service launch follows just a month​ after EDT’s parent, Irish drugmaker Elan, again halted plans to sell off the unit on the basis that market conditions were not “conducive to an appropriate valuation​.”

At the time that Ian Hunter from Goodbody Stockbrokers suggested that increasing revenue would be one way Elan could use to try and attract a buyer for EDT if it does decided to sell the unit again.

So, while growth of outsourcing market may be the primary motivation for the launch, it seems unlikely that Elan will have not at least have considered the impact that additional revenue from the new service will have on EDT’s value.