Recipharm buys Abbott plant to enter Spanish market
pharmafile | October 5, 2010 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Abbott, Recipharm, SolvayÂ
Swedish contract development and manufacturing services company Recipharm has agreed to buy a facility in Parets del Valles, Spain, from Abbott Laboratories for an undisclosed sum.
The Parets facility was originally set up by Belgium’s Solvay Pharmaceuticals, which was acquired in a $6.2 billion deal by Abbott earlier this year. It produces solid dose, sterile ointments, oral liquids, aerosols and topical products with an annual capacity of around 13 million units a year.
The deal marks Recipharm’s entry into the Spanish market and brings a number of new customer relationships, as well as ongoing contracts to continue production of Abbott products currently made at the Parets plant, said the CMO in a statement.
The acquisitive company has previously said it aims to be among the top three CMOs in Europe within the next three years, and Parets is the second plant it has bought on the way towards achieving that ambition.
Last year, the company bought a tablet and manufacturing capsule plant in Fontaine-Les-Dijon, France, from Solvay unit Fournier Laboratories. Prior to that it bought a sterile manufacturing facility in Monts, also in France, from AstraZeneca, as well as a stake in the latter’s biologics manufacturing plant ABL in Sweden, and earlier this year added to its biomanufacturing portfolio with the purchase of Cobra Biomanufacturing of the UK.
Buying the Parets unit adds to Recipharm’s portfolio of production technologies as it tries to develop into a ‘one-stop-shop’ for small and large molecule biopharmaceutical manufacturing.
“The site … benefitted from high levels of investment in recent years [and] is well suited to the flexible requirements of a contract manufacturing operation, already servicing a number of companies,” it added.
Earlier this month Abbott said it planned to shed around 3,000 staff in the wake of the Solvay merger, and the sale of the 21,000 sq.m. Parets plant takes it another step closer to that objective.
At present the facility has a staff of 83 and all will transfer to Recipharm upon closure of the deal, which is anticipated before the end of the year.
Phil Taylor
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