India’s Piramal has intensified its focus on the U.S. market including buying an API producer in the Michigan several years ago. Now its CDMO, Piramal Pharma Solutions, has completed an expansion at that site where it makes high potency active pharmaceutical ingredients (HPAPIs).
The company invested $10 million in the former Ash Stevens site in Riverview, Michigan, where it makes HPAPis with low exposure levels, adding two kilo labs as well as quality control and analysis labs. It has added nearly 50 jobs. It has 127 workers now but says it plans to soon have 150.
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“This new, enhanced capability opens the site up to a new base of customers, including the antibody drug conjugate (ADC) market,” Vince Ammoscato, Piramal VP and site head at Riverview said in a statement.
With demand for high potency APIs growing, other CDMOs are scaling up in that arena as well. Cambrex in May opened new capacity at a site in Iowa. It can handle projects up to 300 kg.
Piramal bought the Ash Stevens operations in 2016 for $53 million and milestones but has also expanded in other areas in the U.S. It paid $155 million deal for a clutch of anesthesia and pain management drugs from Johnson & Johnson, adding to its generic injectable portfolio.
The Indian company got the technical and marketing rights to the drugs but J&J’s Janssen division agreed to manufacture them for at least three years.
