WuXi PharmaTech borrows to expand
pharmafile | February 24, 2015 | News story | Manufacturing and Production, Sales and Marketing | China, NextCODE Health, WuXi PharmaTech, XenoBiotic Laboratories, philadelphia
WuXi PharmaTech has kick started a syndicated loan arrangement in order to borrow up to $165 million from a consortium of banks in Asia and expand manufacturing.
The firm says that the loan will be led chiefly via Citibank and will be repaid in four instalments over an 18- to 36-month period.
Dr Ge Li who is the chairman and chief executive of WuXi PharmaTech, says the new debt facility will enable them to make the investments necessary for its company to achieve full potential.
“While continuously strengthening our existing capabilities, we also see new investment opportunities in the rapidly growing China healthcare market. We need to invest aggressively to extend our research and development capabilities to hospitals, doctors, and patients to capture many of these exciting opportunities.”
With the money it aims to build small-molecule manufacturing facilities in Changzhou that will double its capacity by 2016, and along with this biologics commercial manufacturing plants are planned for Wuxi City.
Add to this two cell-therapy manufacturing facilities in Philadelphia – and the whole outlay racks up to around $340 million. Only last year the firm begun work on its new facility in Philadelphia’s Navy Yard for the production of cell therapies, giving it a foothold in the US market.
The 45,000 square foot facility is being used for clinical and commercial manufacturing space and will boast flexible clean room technology, disposable equipment, and microcarrier cell culture systems.
WuXi already had a 16,000 square foot cGMP cell therapy manufacturing facility in Philadelphia, whose services include analytical chemistry, cell banking, cell characterisation, molecular biology and lot release testing.
But on the new plans, Hu adds: “Our capital spending was approximately $110 million in 2014 and will be approximately $200 million in 2015. We have used cash in 2014 and 2015 to make two acquisitions – XenoBiotic Laboratories for $37.5 million and NextCODE Health for $65 million.”
Brett Wells
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