Mitsui gets bigger in Japan with contract manufacturing buy
pharmafile | April 28, 2011 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Mitsui, contract manufacturingÂ
Japanese company Mitsui & Co has agreed to buy MBS Co, a company set up earlier this month to house the pharmaceuticals and chemicals production business of beverage firm Mercian, from parent company Kirin Holdings.
The deal strengthens Mitsui’s presence in the medical and healthcare sector, where it already has a presence in contract manufacturing, particularly in the area of raw materials supply, as well as distribution and sales operations.
MBS was set up as a bridging company on 11 April in order to facilitate the transfer of the operations and its 220 staff to Mitsui.
MBS brings capacity and expertise in the manufacture of active pharmaceutical ingredients and intermediates via fermentation and enzymatic technologies, and reported sales of 7.6 billion yen (approximately $90 million) in 2010.
It also has a 34% stake in a joint venture in China with Shenzhen Main Luck Pharmaceuticals which centres on finished dose anticancer products and had 2010 sales of around 470 million renminbi (around $70 million). Mitsui said it will sell these products through its own distribution networks once the deal closes.
Contract manufacturing is a relatively recent phenomenon in Japan, and only really started to take off around five years ago after the country’s Pharmaceutical Affairs Law was changed to allow Japanese license holders to outsource 100% of drug manufacturing.
Previously it had only been possible to outsource a part of a medicine’s production, and this introduced complexities and inefficiencies which prevented the development of robust contract manufacturing organisations in Japan.
Now the country is one of the key growth markets in the CMO sector and has been forecast to post growth of nearly 13% a year between 2010 and 2015, according to market research firm GIA.
“Mitsui … will strive to strengthen its CMO business by utilising MBS’s unique manufacturing technologies, know-how and development capabilities”, said the Japanese company in a statement.
It plans to change MBS’ name to MicroBiopharm Japan upon completion of the acquisition, which is due on 1 July.
Phil Taylor
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