This investment was made possible through the recent acquisition of Procos by Japanese firm CBC, a specialty sourcing firm for the pharma industry.
"We have been dealing with US customers for several years but now we have our own representative office in the US," Paola Allegra, business development manager at Procos, told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
"Until now we were providing our services through agents who deal with many customers at the same time, so having our own office in the US will have many benefits."
Allegra added that while Procos' main market for contract manufacturing services is Europe, the US is also a very important market since many of the drug developers the company deals with have got subsidiaries all over the world and in the US in particular.
"Customers will now have access to fine chemicals and APIs in quantities ranging from laboratory to commercial scale quantities, thanks to the addition of Procos USA to the list of specialty sourcing contacts," said CBC in a statement.
Procos is an API and intermediate manufacturer and has competencies in a broad range of technologies, including performing reactions such as cyanation, halogenation, hydrogenation and chlorination.
Competition is fierce in the API manufacturing area and the US market is already flooded but Allegra said that what differentiates Procos from its competitors is its level of regulation compliance.
"We have a high level of compliance with cGMP which is required by the US FDA and that is what allows us to race in the competitive US market," said Allegra.
"We also have a high level of quality in our QA unit, which represents a great strength."
In addition to its contract manufacturing business, Procos produces its own generic drugs and has more than 20 drug master file (DMF) numbers on list. With 200 staff, it is producing more than 30 kinds of generic and patent pharmaceutical intermediates.