DISPATCHES FROM INTERPHEX

Patheon and DSM crossover limited, more growth targeted says DPx

20-Mar-2014 - Last updated on 28-Sep-2021 at 10:46 GMT

Patheon and DSM’s Pharma Products merger is “highly complementary” with crossover limited to North American oral solid manufacturing growth, says DPx as it targets further growth opportunities.

The company DPx is only nine days old but following the $2.65bn (€1.9bn) merger of Patheon and Royal DSM’s pharmaceutical wing, the company told Outsourcing-Pharma.com at Interphex, New York this week it intended to grow further, rather than reduce is expanded network.

“Effectively it’s a merger of two entities that were doing very different things and is highly complementary,” Joe Principe, Patheon’s VP of Business Development for North America, told us.

“It’s really about positioning the company for forward growth, not about overlapping and reducing costs.”

There is some crossover between the two companies, he added, but very little. One example is North American oral solids manufacturing but according to Principe such capabilities and capacity are complementary to the growth strategy of the business, rather than a conflict of services.

World’s largest CMO?

Whilst reports have established Patheon to be the largest pharmaceutical development services (PDS) firm by revenue, the merger had predicted the new entity to jump from third to second largest contract manufacturing organization (CMO), nestled between Catalent and the Aenova Group.

However, Principe said by its own measure the deal: “makes us by and here the largest contract manufacturing supplier in the industry.”

Furthermore, he added: “I would say to you that our focus continues to be on growth, and Patheon and the larger DPx company will remain very active in understanding and driving consolidation in our industry which we think is ripe for further consolidation.”

But when asked whether mega-mergers such as this, or the Aenova Group’s recent acquisition of Haupt was indicative of the state of the industry Principe remained to be convinced.

“Form my experience I would say not, I think there have been lots of smaller moves, I think this is a fairly significant move in terms of scope and scale.” However he added: “I would think the industry will perhaps follow as we go forward.”