Germany-based contract manufacturer CordenPharma is set to spend around €900m over the coming three years, to expand its peptide technology platform in the US and Europe.
It is the company’s largest investment to date and enables two major expansion initiatives simultaneously in the US and Europe, including both existing facilities and new constructions.
The expansion will meet the pharmaceutical industry’s quality and technical standards for short and long-peptide manufacturing, including Biologics License Applications (BLA) requirements, said CordenPharma.
CordenPharma Group president and CEO Michael Quirmbach said: “These investments will profoundly strengthen our ability to provide valuable and much-needed support to innovators for the benefit of patients.
“We are honoured by the trust our customers have placed in us to deliver expert outsourcing for large multiyear contracts, and our team is proud to contribute decades of peptide manufacturing experience towards these transformative new medicines.
“In addition, the strong commitment and support of our shareholder Astorg demonstrates their strategic vision for CordenPharma to become the leading CDMO for complex modalities such as Peptides, by offering fully integrated end-to-end services from APIs to Drug Products.”
As part of the US expansion, CordenPharma will build a new large-scale manufacturing facility and increase manufacturing trains at its existing peptide facility in Colorado.
The expansion of the Colorado site is aimed at meeting the growing demand for GLP-1 peptides, building on multiple long-term manufacturing contracts totalling €3bn.
CordenPharma’s European expansion involves the construction of a new greenfield peptide facility to serve customers from early clinical to late-stage clinical manufacturing.
The company said that its new manufacturing site will be built in the centre of Europe and will be fully integrated within its existing facility network.
Once completed, the new manufacturing facilities will be fully integrated into CordenPharma’s advanced network of world-class cGMP manufacturing sites.
Expert teams will provide dedicated technical and regulatory support for supply chains, offering fully integrated services from APIs to drug products on both small and large scales.
In 2022, European private equity firm Astorg acquired CordenPharma, with plans to help the company achieve its €1bn sales mark and €1.8bn total group revenue by 2028.
Astorg managing director Signe Michel said: “We are proud of what Michael and the CordenPharma team have achieved through their striving for operational excellence, customer service and ambitious growth.
Astorg flagship fund co-head and healthcare head Judith Charpentier said: “CordenPharma has a unique opportunity to reinforce its leadership position in peptides with unmatched capacity and performance in large-scale manufacturing.
“With the company’s proven track record and our investor experience in pharmaceutical services, we feel confident that our latest commitment will help the company seize this opportunity.”
