Sterinova opens sterile injectables plant in Canada

A new facility focused on ready-to-use sterile injectables has come on the scene in Canada, having been built with help from public funds.

Sterinova has opened a $53.3 million ($70 million Canadian) facility in Saint-Hyacinthe in Quebec, having received more than $7 million in funds from public sources. The 67,000-sq-ft facility will make products in syringes and premix solutions containers. A Sterinova spokeswoman said its first product will be a syringe of the anticoagulant heparin sodium, which she said is the first prefilled syringe of that specific product in the market.

"Sterinova is one of the few pharmaceutical companies in the world to be entirely dedicated to the manufacture of ready-to-use injectable products,” Jean-Philippe Gentès, one of the company founders, said in a statement. “Its state of the art technology and its production capacity will make Sterinova an important Canadian player on international markets."

The project received about $5.3 million ($7 million Canadian) from the Quebec Manufacturing Fund and another $1.5 million ($2 million Canadian) from the government of Quebec. The plant was designed with enough space so that its capacity can be doubled, the company said in its announcement. The plant has 55 workers, and another 50 are expected to be added as the company expands. Currently the plant is approved by Health Canada, the company said.

Some of the big players, like Sandoz and Sanofi, have sterile drug manufacturing in Canada, as well as some smaller operations, like Jubilant Life Sciences. Sterile injectables is a hot market right now and there has been considerable M&A action in that field in recent years as more drugmakers develop biologic drugs and contract manufacturers look to cash in on the trend. Last year, for example, Swedish CDMO Recipharm agreed to pay $105.2 million to buy a 74% stake in Indian sterile injectables CMO Nitin Lifesciences.

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