AMRI has extended a buying streak to build up its contract manufacturing capabilities, adding to its injectable drug operations in the process. The company will lay out $60 million to buy two facilities from drug development specialist Aptuit.
In the two-step deal, the New York-based company said it has already paid $24 million for Aptuit's facility in Glasgow, Scotland which specializes in developing injectable drugs and provides clinical stage manufacturing. It also has an agreement to pay $36 million for Aptuit's operation in West Lafayette, IN, which it said would expand its analytical testing services to include peptides, proteins and oligonucleotides. AMRI is using a combination of cash and debt to fund the deals and said it expects the new operations to add between $25 million and $30 million to its 2015 revenues.
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| AMRI CEO William Marth |
"We are very pleased to acquire these two facilities from Aptuit, which will further AMRI's expertise in drug product development and aseptic manufacturing services, two areas of our business where we are seeing the fastest level of growth," AMRI CEO William S. Marth, said in a statement. "Analytical services sits at the interface of API and drug product, providing critical support for all aspects of pharmaceutical development and manufacturing."
These deals follow two last year in which AMRI spent about $150 million to build up its manufacturing capabilities. Those two involved paying $41 million for Grafton, WI-based active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) contract manufacturer Cedarburg Pharmaceuticals and then $110 million deal for Oso Biopharmaceuticals Manufacturing to add that company's expertise in complex injectable drug products to its stable, which added four suites for compounding and formulation, vial filling, 1,230 square feet of lyophilization capacity and a130,000-square-foot DEA-compliant warehouse. But the CMO ran into some issues shortly after closing on the Oso deal. A weather-related power outage at the New Mexico facility took that operation offline for a while and required further investment in the facility, which contributed to a loss in the drug company's third quarter.
After the sales, Aptuit will still offer drug discovery and development services from its facility in Verona, Italy, and retains its active pharmaceutical ingredient facility in Oxford, UK.
- here's the AMRI release
- here's the Aptuit release