Bora Pharmaceuticals will add GSK’s Mississauga, Ontario, facility to its manufacturing network, meaning that the Taiwan-based company will now have a foothold in the North American market.
The facility currently employs approximately 400 staff members and produces 50 products for the worldwide market. The GSK facility scales at over 500,000-square-feet. Bora confirmed that it intends to retain all employees after the change of ownership.
In addition, Bora will commit to producing GSK’s products for a minimum of five years, with the transaction itself expected to complete before the end of 2020.
A spokesperson for Bora told us that they were not able to disclose any financial information around the sale. However, regarding potential further investment in the facility, the spokesperson added that "Additional investments at the site are certainly not out of scope."
Regarding the company's first expansion into North America, the spokesperson said, "Bora believe it’s integral to be localized in this value chain as quality, speed, and communications is vital to the success of drug discovery companies and big Pharma."
With this deal, Bora will effectively double in scale. The contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) currently employs 475 people across its two facilities in Taiwan.
Its Zhunan facility produces solid-dosage forms, with bottle packaging and serialization capabilities, covering 316,000-square-feet; its Tainan facility also produces solid-dosage forms, with packaging lines, covering 258,000-square-feet.
In 2018, GSK announced that it had invested $27.8m (€24.5m) to modernize its Mississauga space, which would see it improve its production capacity to approximately 50 million units per year, effective as of 2020.
The move to sell on the primarily consumer healthcare-focused site, though it also produces prescription products, arrives as GSK looks to separate out its healthcare business to focus on its innovative pharmaceutical portfolio.
Updated 03/13: Comments added from Bora spokesperson.