Under the terms of the deal, Christian Berner will sell a range of GEA's solid dosage form manufacturing and processing technologies throughout Sweden and Norway.
The agreement represents what GEA is referring to as an “important sales channel” as it looks to expand its operations across Scandinavia.
It also marks the latest development in a long standing relationship between GEA and Christian Berner – the Swedish firm having represented GEA's Niro Spray driers in the region or a number of years.
Frans Maas, vice president of sales and marketing for GEA suggested the deal is good news for the company's customers.
“The new agreement will provide an excellent service network enabling us to react more quickly to our customers' requirements for high quality service and supply of market leading solid dosage technology,” he said.
Bo Soderqvist, managing director of Christian Berner, said the deal made perfect sense.
“This new range of products fits well with our strategy to expand within the pharmaceutical processing industry, and we are excited to be able to present these well proven and market leading technologies,” he said.
in-PharmaTechnologist.com approached both GEA and Christian Berner for further comment on the deal, but at the time of writing had received no response.
The deals European focus is something of a change for GEA, whose recent expansion efforts have been in rapidly expanding markets in Asia.
Late last year for example the firm bought China's Beijing Sino-German Tianhe Technology (BGST) to build its presence in China's pharmaceutical freeze-drying technologiy market.
Prior to that GEA Pharma Systems’ signed up ACE Technologies of Mumbai, India as distributor for its GEA Lyophil’s pharmaceutical freeze-drying technology.