Fujifilm pays Biogen nearly $1B for Denmark biologics site 

Fujifilm has sealed the deal. With the completion of an $890 million, all-cash exchange with Biogen, the CDMO is now in possession of a biologics production facility in Denmark with about 800 employees. 

The 90,000-L capacity facility in Hillerød marks the fourth biologics manufacturing site for Tokyo-based Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies, a partnership between Fujifilm and Mitsubishi. The site has six 15,000L bioreactors as well as assembly, labeling and packing capabilities, quality control laboratories and warehouses.  

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Fujifilm and Biogen also struck an agreement for the CDMO to supply to Biogen the meds the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech has been manufacturing at the site, including multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri.

"For us, this is more than an acquisition,” Steve Bagshaw, CEO of Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies said in a statement. “It is fulfilling Fujifilm's mission and the vision to bring new value to society, through innovation and the creation of new technologies, products and services."

When the deal was struck, Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos said in a statement that the company decided the Denmark site had been made redundant by the $1 billion biologics facility it is building in Solothurn, Switzerland, along with one it has in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The plant in Switzerland is expected to come online in 2020. Separately, Biogen has a joint venture with Samsung BioLogics that makes biosimilars.

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Fujifilm has been steadily adding to its biologics CDMO business. Last year,  the Japanese company paid about $800 million to buy a pair of cell culture media units from Japan’s JXTG Holdings. In January, it said it would invest about $90 million to expand its biologics plant in Morrisville, North Carolina. It also is building a facility in Madison, Wisconsin to ramp up induced pluripotent stem cell technologies for its pipeline of regenerative drugs and to manufacture iPS cells for others. It also has operations at College Station, Texas and Billingham and Redcar, U.K. 

The company says it will continue to further expand the business as it looks to achieve $1 billion in sales in its bio CDMO business by fiscal year ending March 2022.