After getting its hands on a massive Quebecois manufacturing plant from Sandoz in 2022, French CDMO Delpharm is making good on an earlier pledge to upgrade the site.
Equipped with a 60 million Canadian dollar ($42 million) investment (PDF) from the Canadian government, Delpharm is striking out on a multiyear campaign to modernize, upgrade and expand the facility, which is among the largest for sterile injectables production in Canada.
The site, located in the town of Boucherville in Quebec, pumps out 20 of the 100 medicines deemed critical to the Canadian healthcare system, making it a key player in supplying essential generic products nationwide, the company said in a March 18 press release.
Supporting the investment is a 10-year agreement Delpharm signed with generic and biosimilar giant Sandoz to supply its products, the company said. No additional details of the deal were disclosed.
In full, Delpharm's facility modernization project is expected to top out at a total investment of more than 200 million Canadian dollars ($140 million) and protect more than 500 manufacturing jobs in Quebec, the company said in its release.
The plant makeover, which is expected to be complete in 2031, covers the installation of new filling lines and upgrades to existing equipment to meet current regulatory standards. Overall, Delpharm says it expects to replace around 95% of its existing equipment at the Boucherville site.
“This investment enhances the appeal of our Boucherville site, recognized as our centre of expertise in sterile and biological products for the North American market," Stéphane Lepeu, Delpharm's commercial chief, said in a statement. The move also supports Delpharm's broader goal to cement its position among the world's top five CDMOs, he added.
The facility currently produces 65 million units per year, mainly for the North American market, generating an annual revenue of 150 million Canadian dollars ($105 million). The site specializes in sterile drugs packaged in vials and ampoules, Delpharm said.
“This transformation will make our site a world-class facility, in addition to significantly increasing our production capacity and competitiveness,” Mathieu Grondin, Delpharm’s site director, said in a statement. “The injectable medications we produce at the site for Sandoz are necessary in almost all surgeries performed in Canada and used to treat patients in intensive care unit.”
Delpharm snapped up the facility from Sandoz for an undisclosed price in March 2022. Sandoz, a unit of Novartis at the time, became a standalone company when it was spun out in October 2023.
Upon acquiring the facility, which marked the CDMO's second in Canada at the time, Delpharm said it planned to plug additional cash into the site in the future.
Investments in fill-finish facilities have been booming in the past year.
In October, Afton Scientific said it would spend $200 million to expand its facility in Charlottesville, Virginia. Last June, meanwhile, Taiwanese CDMO Bora Pharmaceuticals agreed to buy Emergent BioSolutions' Baltimore fill-finish plant for $30 million, while Novo Nordisk said it would spend $4.1 billion to build a second fill-finish facility in Clayton, North Carolina.
Novo's news came one month after Eli Lilly announced its own $5.3 billion investment aimed at boosting manufacturing capacity. Both companies have invested billions of dollars in recent years to beef up production capacity for their popular GLP-1 medicines in diabetes and weight loss.