Spanish pharmaceutical company GP Pharm has invested €13 million in a new drugs factory in Sant Quinti de Mediona, Spain. The recently-formed company, part of pharmaceutical and cosmetics group Lipotec, has also earmarked €14 million in funding - out to 2007 - to produce clinical supplies of hormones and encapsulated active pharmaceutical ingredients that treat cancer and urological diseases.
GP Pharm will also make drugs on a contract basis for third parties and the company is currently negotiating supply contracts. The 6,000-square metre factory will have a capacity of 10 million finished product units by 2007 and will employ up to 200 people. The plant is already online and GP Pharma expects to start commercial production in the second half of this year. It is estimating annual sales of €80m by 2007.
Germany's Vetter Pharma-Fertigung , a specialist in aseptic filling of liquid and lyophilised drugs, has said it plans to expand its production capacities in 2006 with the construction of a new biopharmaceutical production facility at its Ravensburg Vetter South (RVS) site.
The company said it is currently capable of producing more than 300 million prefilled syringe systems per year across all its sites. The new facility, which is expected to come on stream in autumn next year, will increase this capacity by more than 30 per cent. It will also duplicate existing production lines, providing Vetter's customers with what it described as 'considerable delivery and process security'.
Savient Pharmaceuticals of the US says that it expects the closing of the €61m sale of its Israel-based biologics manufacturing business to Ferring to occur within the next 30 days.
It has received clearance on three of the five required Israeli regulatory approvals, including anti-trust agreement. Savient previously announced its intention to sell this business to Ferring BV and Ferring International Centre, subsidiaries of Ferring Holding, a privately-owned specialty biopharmaceutical company which is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The Borisov Medicines Plant in Belarus has been awarded a Good Manufacturing Practice certificate, according to the Belarusian Telegraph Agency. The Belarusian government has said it wants to see domestic pharmaceutical producers supplying 50 per cent of the domestic market by 2019; the current figure is 28 per cent, the agency notes.
Belarus started working on introducing GMP in 1998. In 2002 the government approved a state program on transition of the pharmaceutical industry to GMP standards.
US biosciences company Codexis has signed an agreement with India-based Matrix Laboratories, a provider of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to the global drug industry, for the development and commercialisation of an API for a high-value pharmaceutical product.
Codexis will use its proprietary pharmaceutical process re-engineering technology platform to develop a novel synthetic process for the product using its Thoroughbred biocatalyst. The process will be transferred to Matrix for scale-up and manufacturing. Under the terms of the collaboration, Codexis will receive R&D funding, milestone payments and a royalty on net sales of the product. Matrix will gain exclusive manufacturing and marketing rights to the novel process. Further financial terms were not disclosed.
Drugmaker Actavis Bulgaria is to be restructured into two companies: Actavis Trading, based in Sofia, which will conduct marketing and sales; and Actavis Operations, which will operate production facilities in Troyan, Dupnitsa and Razgrad, according to the Bulgarian Economic Review.
