CDMO Sterling Pharma continues buying spree with former Alcami ingredients plant pickup

For contract drug manufacturers with global aspirations, establishing a presence in both the U.S. and abroad is an increasingly common goal. That's certainly the story for U.K.-based Sterling Pharma, which is fleshing out its stateside offerings with the purchase of an established ingredients plant. 

Sterling has acquired Alcami's former active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) plant in Germantown, Wisconsin, as the company aims to beef up in the U.S., Sterling said Wednesday. 

Sterling's Germantown buyout is the small-molecule API maker's latest move in an investment drive worth $46 million over the last four years, Sterling said in a release. The plant will come with "specialist expertise" in technologies that include cryogenic reactions and plant-scale hydrogenation or the process of adding molecular hydrogen to another compound. 

A Sterling spokesperson could not be reached for comment by press time. 

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Adding a new API plant is part of Sterling's strategy to establish a U.S. presence. In April 2019, Sterling acquired its Cary, North Carolina, location of CiVentiChem, its first U.S. facility, and retained its 23 employees. The deal gave Sterling the ability to provide chemical development more easily to its clients.

The Cary facility has development laboratories and kilo-scale cGMP suites for complex chemistry work. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the two companies said CiVentiChem would continue to operate out of its own facility in India as a separate entity from Sterling.

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Sterling's Cary purchase came just weeks after a management buyout involving European private investment firm GHO Capital. GHO noted Sterling’s expertise in complex chemistry when announcing the deal.

Sterling was itself created in 2016 through a buyout by managers of a nearly 50-year-old facility in Dudley, U.K., from Strides Shasun.