Sun selling Ohio plant in post-Ranbaxy network restructure
The Indian drugmaker has entered into an agreement to sell its manufacturing unit in Bryan, Ohio to Missouri-based Nostrum Laboratories - which it says will retain the employees and related products there – as part of its manufacturing consolidation in the US.
The site has been part of Sun’s manufacturing network since 2005 when it was acquired from Valeant Pharmaceuticals in order to “accelerate filings for the US generic market and address opportunities in liquids and semisolids,” the company’s Founder and Managing Director Dilip Shanghvi said at the time.
When asked, Sun Pharma spokesman Frederick Castro was unable to offer any further details regarding the transaction and the reasons behind it.
Luckily Shanghvi - still MD at the firm - has been more vocal about the need to restructure Sun’s network following the acquisition of fellow Indian drugmaker Ranbaxy in April.
During a financial call last in August, he told investors that “based on the optimum level of manufacturing infrastructure, for current and future business requirement, we will look at rationalising manufacturing footprint,” adding that both Ranbaxy plants and existing Sun facilities are planned for shut down.
“It is all linked with the dosage form,” he continued. “If you look at Liposomal Doxorubicin [for example] we have no backup facility right now… So the idea for us is to find a way to create a backup facility for all our critical products.
“But for some of the products like oral solids, we have enough manufacturing footprint within the system for us to be able to move the products.”
The following month, the firm announced it had earmarked a former Ranbaxy unit in County Tipperary, Ireland for divestment and hinted that other sites may go the same way.
