Nordic Life Science 1
inally, a very important milestone that makes Rec
ipharm what it is today is its recent acquisition of Consort Medical in February 2020. The acquisition of the UK-listed company Consort Medical made Recipharm into one of the largest CDMOs in the world in terms of revenue. ”In particular, the acquisition adds innovative medical device capabilities to our offering and enhances our inhalation development and manufacturing services,” says Eldered. he year afterwards Recipharm acquired Uppsala-based OnTarget Chemistry, strengthening its development services offering, and a facility from Alcon in France, adding the blowfill-seal technology. That same year the company also initiated the acquisition of a majority stake in Indian CMO 56 NORDICLIFESCIENCE.ORG Nitin Lifesciences, creating a platform for emerging markets. The deal was finalized in April 2016, and Recipharm acquired the remaining shares in Nitin Lifesciences Limited in January 2018. Since then, acquisitions have included Italian CDMO Mitim, Kemwell’s CDMO businesses in the US, Sweden and in India, Roche manufacturing facility in Leganés, Spain, and Sanofi’s inhalation contract manufacturing business, including a manufacturing facility located in Holmes Chapel, UK. Similarly to almost every business, Recipharm has been impacted since the outbreak of COVID-19, however the level of this impact has been manageable, states Eldered. Since the start of the pandemic the company has experienced some delays in the supply of starting materials and API. These delays have had little to no impact on the operations, however, since part of the company’s contingency plans have been to increase safety stock levels. ”We have seen demand largely unaffected, but a significant increase in demand for certain products used in intensive care. The safety of our employees is top priority and following additional risk assessments we have implemented enhanced safety protocols, a no visitor policy and workflow adjustments in order to maximize social distancing. When it comes to personal protective equipment (PPE), our teams have taken a new approach to procurement, sourcing PPE for all our European sites at once. This means we have been able to order larger quantities of PPE in one bulk order, which we then distribute to all of our European sites. In addition to this, our regional and international Recipharm teams have been pulling together and supporting their local communities, frontline health workers, healthcare facilities and hospices at this testing time by donating PPE.”