Sagent Pharmaceuticals, a Nichi-Iko Group company, and provider of specialty pharmaceutical products with an emphasis on the injectable market, has acquired an FDA-approved manufacturing site in Raleigh, NC from Xellia Pharmaceuticals.
 
The manufacturing site, which is approved for manufacturing of both small molecule and biologic products, is the first FDA-approved facility in the Nichi-Iko Group network. Sagent intends to continue manufacturing certain products for Xellia, while utilizing the site’s capabilities to enhance its ability to address unmet market needs.
 
“The acquisition of this facility is a significant milestone in our journey to transform Sagent,” said Peter Kaemmerer, chief executive officer, Sagent. “In addition to complementing our historic partner-based supply model with internal manufacturing capabilities, the Raleigh site will enable production of lyophilized formulations of our future biosimilar product offerings.”
 
The Raleigh facility was mainly used for producing lyophilized injectable products for Xellia’s own business as well as contract manufacturing. The transaction does not involve any transfer of product or intellectual property rights. The production of certain Xellia products will be transferred to the company’s two main sterile injectable sites in Cleveland and Copenhagen whereas other products will continue to be manufactured at the Raleigh site after the divestment.
 
As part of the contract, Xellia will continue to operate the plant for an interim period. At the end of this period the operation of the facility will transfer to Sagent and all of the approximately 120 staff will be offered employment with Sagent. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
 
“We expanded our business during 2018 from being a manufacturer and leading supplier of important established anti-infectives to pharmaceutical customers to now include Xellia’s own label of established and innovative value-added sterile injectable anti-infective products which we are selling directly to the U.S. hospital market,” said Carl-Åke Carlsson, chief executive officer, Xellia Pharmaceuticals. “As part of this transformation we took the strategic decision to focus manufacturing investment on Cleveland and Copenhagen in order to ensure that we have the production capabilities to match our growing portfolio of established and innovative products and sufficient space to enable the facility expansions as needed.”