Oral dose pharmaceutical excipients and polymers used for depot formulations and bioresorbable implants, are increasing in price, Evonik Industries announced last week.
“The increases vary quite a bit depending on product, grade and country affected,” Vice President of Marketing Services Axel Bergt told in-Pharmatechnologist.com.
He was unable to give us a range of specific figures “given that our polymer portfolio is quite diverse and offered to a global customer base” but said all current contracts would not be affected by the price changes.
The firm says the price changes are necessary to “maintain the high level of service and quality” of the excipients, but we asked Bergt what specifically has changed to drive this increase:
“We have fine-tuned services in our overall offering,” he told us. “Most specifically we offer further quality information along the increasing needs of QbD [Quality by Design] and a closer net of local technical service centres which are incremental to provide a better service and higher value to customers.”
The price hike affects the company’s Eudragit range of excipients, comprising of polymers used to encapsulate and control the release of small molecule APIs, peptides and proteins. Polymers falling under Evonik’s Resomer brand – used in medical implants and devices – will also be affected.
The news comes less than two years after the Essen, Germany-based firm hiked up prices 10%, citing rising costs across its network, comprising of labs located in Germany, USA, India, China, Japan and Argentina.