Piramal, like a number of its Indian compatriots, has decided it is a good idea to have manufacturing operations based in the U.S. Having bought a sterile manufacturing operation last year, the Indian drugmaker has now snapped up a Midwestern-based CDMO.
Piramal said today that it has agreed to pay $42.95 million in cash for Riverview, MI-based Ash Stevens with an additional $10 million to be paid if the operation hits certain milestones.
With the deal, Piramal gets 60,000 square feet of facilities, 8 chemical drug development and production laboratories, and 6 full-scale production areas, including facilities for high potency API manufacturing.
“North America is a key market that we can now service with our three local facilities--the Coldstream Labs in Kentucky for fill finish needs, the Torcan facility in Toronto for complex high value API’s and now, Ash Stevens in Michigan for HPAPIs,” Piramal CEO Vivek Sharma said in a statement. “Currently, around 25% of the molecules in clinical development are potent. Our clients are looking for reliable partners that can assist them in advancing these programs forward,” he said.
In January 2015, Piramal agreed to pay $30.65 million to buy Coldstream Laboratories from the University of Kentucky to get its expertise in sterile injectable meds. With that deal, it got an FDA-approved sterile injectable facility on the Research Park Campus of the university in Lexington, along with about 100 employees. Earlier this year, Piramal said it would invest $10 million in an expansion of the Coldstream operation.
Indian companies have been aggressive buyers of small- to medium-sized U.S. operations in the last few years. Among the deals of note was one by Mumbai-based Lupin Pharmaceuticals to buy two New Jersey generics companies in July for a total of almost $900 million. Cipla last year agreed to pay $550 million for InvaGen Pharmaceuticals, a Hauppauge, NY-based generics maker and its marketing operation, picking up a 350,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in the deal.
- here’s the release
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