Currently the largest producer of oral contraceptives in Europe is Bayer Healthcare. Munster, Germany-based contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) says it will soon become the continent's second largest producer as a result of a major new contract with an unnamed pharmaceutical group that used to make its pills in Ireland.
Haupt Pharma spokeswoman Katrin Glees told Outsourcing-Pharma.com “the large group has now chosen to contract manufacture the pills” but could not disclosed addition details other than that production has already been transferred to Germany and that the CMO has ramped up capacity accordingly.
“New equipment was installed for bulk production as well as for the packaging of finished product,” she said, adding “this transfer project has strengthened the site’s services” and Haupt is now “better than ever prepared for the manufacturing of oral contraceptives as finished products.”
Over the last year the company has invested €15m ($11.3m) in the site, adding two tablet presses, a film and sugar coating machine, and two large packaging lines in order to prepare for an expected volume of around three billion tablets per year.
This comes as part of an overall €30m investment since 2007 in the facility, with 80 new jobs being created over the last eighteen months and more to come as production is ramped up in the next couple of years.
Ireland Looks to High Margins
Outsourcing-Pharma.com contacted Ireland’s Industrial Development Authority (IDA) for comment regarding Ireland’s loss to a foreign third-party manufacturer.
Though the IDA was not aware of this specific contract, a spokesperson told us “modulation of company supply chains for drug manufacturing is something that happens quite regularly.”
Furthermore, “in many cases production of lower margin products will be outsourced and replaced with production of higher margin products.
A recent article in our sister publication, Biopharma-Reporter.com, suggested similar trends with patent cliffs and cheaper outsourcing options in foreign markets leading to pharma shifting its manufacturing focus away from small molecules and towards biopharmaceuticals.
However, the IDA also said: “Ireland’s cost competitiveness generally has been improving dramatically in recent years, compared to its competitor countries and as a result additional investment from the Pharma sector has been placed in Ireland.”