Swiss drug delivery specialist Acino has opened a new plant at its Miesbach, Germany, site as it gets ready to produce a new birth control patch from Bayer.
Acino poured €20 million ($24.7 million) into the facility, which includes laboratories and "modern storage space," the company says. It will employ about 40 people. The company says initially it can turn out 37 million patches but that the plant was designed so that production could be increased to three times that many.
Of course that is dependent on Bayer and its success with the new contraceptive. Birth control is a significant part of Bayer's business but it has not always been easy. The company has been handing out hundreds of millions to settle litigation tied to its Yaz birth control line, which is linked to blood clots. In its earnings report late last month, Bayer said it had set aside €500 million ($615.8 million) to cover its Yaz and Yasmin litigation and has settled almost 1,900 lawsuits for a total of $402 million-plus. That is on top of €200 million ($246.3 million) set aside in 2010 and 2011.
Production is slated to begin in the final quarter of the year for the patch, which Acino says is still in Phase III clinical trials. InPharm says the patch contains a combination of ethinyl estradiol and gestodene and will be the "smallest, lowest-dosed and the only transparent patch for female contraception on the market." Acino and Bayer signed the production deal for the new contraceptive patch in 2011. Acino, which says it is the second-largest contraceptive patch maker in Europe, expects to quickly take production to more than 100 million patches at the new plant.
- here's the release
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