Boehringer steps up contract manufacturing in Mexico

The German pharma giant said it has taken these steps after spotting a dearth of competition from manufacturers within Mexico and was heavily promoting its latest movements at last week's Interphex Pharmaceutical trade show in New York.

The firm has begun offering North American firms contract manufacturing and packaging services for solid, semi-solid, soft-gel and liquid pharmaceuticals from its existing Mexican plant, which had until recently only produced in-house drugs for the company.

However, this is not Boehringer's first contract manufacturing enterprise in Mexico.

The firm began offering these services five years ago from the same plant but stopped one year later due to a "change in strategy," after it no longer had any spare manufacturing capacity.

Due to another "change in strategy," the company has now restarted the service after it was left with excess capacity at the site after one of its in-house products, Movic, went off patent last year.

"There is now a large demand for high quality, low cost manufacturing in North America," company spokesperson Dietmar Wagenknecht told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.

"When the North American free trade agreement (NAFTA) came into place many years ago - providing customs advantages between Mexico and North America - there was a flurry of companies trying to offer low cost contract services from Mexico, but from what we hear, many companies have been disappointed by the quality.

There are now less than five contract manufacturers operating in Mexico supplying the US market," he said.

"Our facility, however, is inspected routinely by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)."

According to a company spokesperson based in Mexico, Erica Ruiz, it is the only FDA-approved contract manufacturing plant in Mexico.

Wagenknecht said that while the company had considered India and China as areas of interest, it decided to locate in Mexico because of its much closer proximity to North America and "our ability to still deliver products at the same or lower cost to India or China from this location."

Meanwhile, because of the market trend and the fact that it expects to attract clients who are currently using its pilot production facilities in France, the firm expects demand for its Mexican contract manufacturing business to grow and has capacity ready and waiting for when it does.

"We are currently operating on one shift but we are capable of operating on three shifts," said Wagenknecht.