Cambrex, which last week completed a $425 million deal to buy Halo Pharma and its two manufacturing sites, is expanding its facilities in North Carolina.
The East Rutherford, New Jersey-based API maker announced it will acquire a leased 35,000-square-foot facility it operates in High Point, as well as an adjacent 45,000-square-foot building. The API maker intends to establish a “center of excellence” for API clinical supply and process development.
The facilities will be fitted with kilo-scale and pilot-scale vessels, continuous reaction production, and chemistry, engineering and analytical development laboratories. The company declined to provide the cost of the investment but said the expansion will add to improvements made at the High Point operations which were picked up in its $25 million acquisition of PharmaCore in 2016. When the expansion is complete, the company expects to have 150 employees at the facility, triple the number when it got the site.
“Since we acquired the former PharmaCore business, now Cambrex High Point, in October 2016, we have invested over $5 million at the site and this is set to continue with both the strategic building acquisition and subsequent fit-out,” Cambrex CEO Steven Klosk said in a statement.
RELATED: Cambrex buying Pharmacore in $25M deal
The site produces complex APIs and intermediates in batch sizes from milligrams to 100 kg in support of clinical trials from phase 1 through to phase 3. The site is licensed with the DEA to manufacture Schedule II to Schedule V controlled substances.
Cambrex, which has been steadily expanding, last week closed its acquisition of dosage-form CDMO Halo Pharma. Cambrex picked up manufacturing sites in Whippany, New Jersey, and Montreal, comprising a total of 430,000 square feet of plant space. Its 450-person workforce joins Cambrex’s 1,200 employees across the U.S. and Europe.