Roche sells Italian formulations plant to CMO Delpharm
Contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) Delpharm has completed the purchase of a Roche solid and liquid forms manufacturing facility in Milan/Segrate, Italy and inked a supply agreement with the Swiss pharma giant.
“The agreement between Roche and Delpharm includes a multi-year manufacturing contract, where it is intended that Delpharm will continue to support solid and liquid forms production for Roche in the future,” Roche spokeswoman Ulrike Engels-Lange told in-Pharmatechnologist.
“Further to this, Delpharm intends to bring business and volumes from its other customers to utilize the site’s capacity and capabilities to its full potential.”
Financials surrounding the sale have not been disclosed but Delpharm will keep on all of the plant’s employees as per agreement with Roche.
The site will also become the twelfth for Delpharm and its second in Italy, following the acquisition of a site in Novara from Takeda last year. In fact the European CMO has a reputation of growing through the acquisition of Big Pharma plants. Since 2012 it has bought a Sanofi plant in Dijon, a Pfizer plant in Lyon and a Bayer plant in Gaillard (all France).
Roche restructure
Roche put the Milan/Segrate site up for sale in November 2015 as part of a plan to reduce its small molecule manufacturing footprint.
“The exit of the site is part of a restructuring of our manufacturing network for small molecules, which is designed to address significant changes in our portfolio,” Engels-Lange told us.
The firm has also sold a solid dose pharmaceutical in Leganés, Spain to Famar, and last year sold an API production plant in Florence, South Carolina to Patheon. A site in Clarecastle, Ireland is also being shuttered.
But it is only Roche’s small molecule footprint which is being reduced, as the firm has been vocal about continuing to expand what it says is “the largest biologics manufacturing capacity across the industry.”
