Alkermes moves to Ireland and lands multimillion dollar manufacturing deal
The biopharmaceutical firm set up the new Dublin-headquartered corporate entity, Alkermes Inc, after completing the $960 (€660m) acquisition of Elan Drug Technologies (EDT) earlier this month.
The purchase, plans for which were announced in May, included EDT’s manufacturing and pharmaceutical formulations facility and 450-strong workforce in Athlone, County Westmeath, which will service the new manufacturing contract.
Alkermes did not disclose the precise nature of the new agreement, or provide details of the pharmaceutical firm involved when contacted by in-Pharmatechnologist.com.
However, the firm did reveal that the contract will involve the manufacture of a finished drug product and predicted that the work will contribute between $15m and $20m a year to its annual revenues by 2016.
Gateway to Europe
Speaking last week Alkermes CEO Richard Pops said the firm “is excited to have our operations based in Ireland, which we view as a gateway to the European Union and global pharmaceutical market."
He expanded on this in an interview with Bloomberg, telling the newswire the company will be looking to purchase “drug-product opportunities” and not technologies for delivering medicines to their targets.
This is in keeping with predictions made by Shane Cooke, former head of EDT and new Alkermes president, just ahead of the closure of the acquisition.
He told investors that Alkermes' strategy will be to apply EDT’s proprietary technologies, such as solubilisation processes, to improve the performance of existing pharmaceutical products.
“Partnering or licensing these products will generate royalty and manufacturing revenues for EDT,” said Cooke.
