The Mercachem-Syncom Group will have more than 300 employees and operations in Nijmegen and Groningen, the Netherlands and Prague, Czech Republic, following the merger of Mercachem and Syncom.
“With the combination of the two companies we have built the best-in-class chemistry service provider working on the most challenging projects and chemical structures,” Matteo Racca, partner at Gilde Healthcare told Outsourcing-Pharma.com.
Gilde Healthcare, a European healthcare investor, supported the merger and also recently announced its exit from Viroclinics Biosciences. Viroclinics was purchased from the investor by a Dutch private equity firm, Parcom Capital earlier this week.
PGGM, a Dutch pension fund service provider, also invested in the Mercachem-Syncom merger.
“The market for drug discovery services grows significantly as pharma and biotech customers are increasing the share of outsourced services. In parallel a consolidation phase is ongoing in the CRO market to offer more integrated services,” added Racca.
“In order to support future growth it is important to continue to invest in new high quality, innovative and complementary services, facilities, personnel and knowledge,” he told us.
Eelco Ebbers, Managing Director of Mercachem commented in the release that the Mercachem-Syncom Group is “small enough to care and large enough to matter.”
“The remark … refers to the new Mercachem-Syncom Group as a mid-sized CRO,” explained Racca.
“At the same time, in order to accommodate larger and more integrated projects it is important to have a certain critical size and invest in complementary services,” he said. “We saw an opportunity to build a leading mid-sized European CRO that could address these customer needs.”