Romaco Owner IPPT Buys IMA's Kilian Citing Tech and Asian Reach

By Gareth Macdonald

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Marketing

IPPT Buys IMA's Kilian Citing Tech and Asia
IPPT Buys IMA's Kilian Citing Tech and Asia
IPPT has announced plans to buy tablet press maker Kilian for €21m from IMA citing the German firm’s patent portfolio and Asian reach as the key drivers.

The deal will see International Process and Packaging Technologies (IPPT) take charge of Kilian and its 150-strong workforce by the end of the summer, after which it will operate as a sister company to IPPT’s packaging technology company Romaco.

Romaco CEO Paulo Alexandre told in-Pharmatechnologist.com that: “Kilian holds a wide range of national and international patents within the field of state-of-the-art tablet pressing equipment.

He added that: “Kilian has more than a century of experience in the tablet pressing business and due to the course of time has gained deep technical knowledge within this area. We therefore decided to enlarge our portfolio to cover a larger part of our customer’s value chain.”

Asian reach

Alexandre also cited Kilian’s standing in the Asian pharmaceutical manufacturing market as a factor, explaining that: “Kilian already has a very strong market position in India. India is currently the strongest market concerning the production of pharmaceutical generic products.

India is also crucial for the Romaco Group’s technologies with their focus on OEE-optimisation. Therefore India represents a big cross-selling potential for both Kilian and Romaco,”​ he continued adding that Kilian should likewise benefit from Romaco’s sales network in South-East-Asia.

Beyond this the two sister companies will also target China according to Alexandre, who said: “One of our future aims is to establish a strong market position in China and to penetrate the local corporate network​.”

He also told us that the takeover is unlikely to result in any redundancies or facility divestitures at Kilian, explaining that: “Our aim is the top-line growth of Kilian accompanied by a series of investments into the same. Therefore our objective is to support the company’s expansion.”

Optimise in Italy

Despite selling Kilian, IMA will continue to operate in the tableting technology market according to CFO Sergio Marzo.

He told in-Pharmatechnologist.com that IMA “will continue to offer selected tablet press machines under a non-compete agreement in the pharmaceutical market for two years.​”

Marzo explained that selling Kilian enabled IMA “optimize the geographical distribution of production and product development facilities… In this way we have concentrated in Italy big part of our production to get higher synergies on the R&D and production activities​.”

He also suggested that acquisitions in the pharmaceutical technology sector may be a possibility, commenting that: “IMA has always invested in the pharmaceutical market and in the future, should we find some interesting targets we will evaluate them in order to widen our product range​.”

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