Recipharm charms Cobra shareholders into selling up
pharmafile | February 5, 2010 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Cobra, Recipharm, WasserburgerÂ
Swedish contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) Recipharm has said that its takeover bid for UK company Cobra Biomanufacturing has been declared ‘unconditional’, meaning that most of Cobra’s shareholders have agreed to sell their stakes in the company.
Recipharm now owns nearly 82% of Cobra, a contract manufacturer specialising in protein- and nucleic acid-based medicines, viruses and cells, and says it holds convertible notes that if exercised would raise its stake to around 87%.
Recipharm’s offer already has the endorsement of Cobra’s board of directors, who have described the deal as an “essential step” in the company’s development.
Cobra had difficulty maintaining sufficient levels of working capital in the months building up to Recipharm’s offer, which includes a provision for loans to support the business while the integration takes place.
Recipharm has said the addition of Cobra will double its biologics business and create a platform for an end-to-end biomanufacturing platform in the future.
The Swedish firm has extended the deadline for remaining shareholders to accept the offer to February 17, after which Cobra will be taken into private ownership and de-listed from the UK stock market on March 5.
News of the imminent closure of the acquisition comes on the end of an acquisitive spree by Recipharm, which it says is designed to catapult it into a top three position among CDMOs.
Last month, it announced its plant to purchase German company Wasserburger Arzneimittelwerk from Hospira, in a move which adds large-scale freeze-drying capabilities to its portfolio.
Wasserburger specialises in the aseptic filling and lyophilisation of pharmaceuticals into ampoules and vials and is another step forward in Recipharm’s drive to become a full-spectrum provider of CDMO services for both traditional pharma and biopharmaceuticals.
In 2008, Recipharm bought a small-scale lyophilisation facility from Swiss company Inotech Labor and a fill-and-finish and packaging plant in France from Solvay, and also entered the biopharma sector via the lease of a biologics development and manufacturing facility in Sweden from AstraZeneca.
A year earlier it had snapped up UK CMO Ashton Pharma after its former parent Inyx hit a financial roadblock, and bought an AstraZeneca sterile manufacturing unit in Monts, France.
The Cobra purchase adds two additional UK facilities in Oxford and Keele, as well as a proprietary protein expression system to create high-yield cell lines and an oral vaccine delivery technology.
Cobra will be the third UK-based biopharmaceutical CMO to be sold off in recent weeks, after Avecia (bought by Merck & Co) and Eden BioDesign (acquired by Watson Pharmaceuticals).
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