SkyePharma leases manufacturing business to CMO
pharmafile | August 9, 2011 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Aenova, Skyepharma, pharma manufacturing newsÂ
German contract manufacturer Aenova is to lease a manufacturing unit near Lyon, France, from UK drugmaker SkyePharma.
Aenova has taken an initial two-year lease at the plant in Saint Quentin-Fallavier, with an option to extend it for a further three years, and said the boost in capacity would help it to “support our ambitious plans for growth in the US market”.
The deal “will provide Aenova with access to an FDA-registered pharmaceutical manufacturing facility which has significant available capacity and SkyePharma will benefit from rental income from Aenova”, said the UK firm in a statement.
Aenova will pay rent at a rate of 1 million euros a year in cash for the first two years, after an initial six-month rent-free period. On renewal the rent will be increased to 2 million euros per annum. The entire manufacturing business comes under Aenova’s banner as a going concern this month.
In 2009, SkyePharma cut the workforce at the French plant, which is focused on manufacturing tablets based on its Geomatrix solid oral dose technology, as part a cost-saving drive. One issue affecting the facility is that many Geomatrix licensees have decided to make product themselves rather than outsource production to SkyePharma.
Those customers whose products are made at Saint Quentin-Fallavier will continue to be made by the business under Aenova. The CMO will also manufacture SkyePharma’s current portfolio of oral products, as well as those in development at the drugmaker. The plant should be ready to make additional products from 2013.
“By introducing additional products to the facility, the alliance aims to increase utilisation rates and reduce the dependency on relatively few products and the risk of losses in the manufacturing business”, said SkyePharma.
Aenova was set up in 2008 by the merger of Dragenopharm and Swiss Caps, and reported sales of 230 million euros in 2010.
Aside from the new leased facility in France, the CMO has nine manufacturing sites in Germany, Switzerland, Romania and the USA and is currently building a new factory for high-volume products at Tittmoning in Upper Bavaria.
Phil Taylor
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