'It's a growth play': Catal­ent ac­quires Bris­tol-My­er­s' Eu­ro­pean launch pad, ex­pand­ing glob­al CD­MO ops

Catal­ent is stay­ing on the growth track.

Just two months af­ter com­mit­ting $1.2 bil­lion to pick up Paragon and take a deep dive in­to the siz­zling hot gene ther­a­py man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor, the CD­MO is bounc­ing right back with a deal to buy out Bris­tol-My­ers’ cen­tral launch­pad for new ther­a­pies in Eu­rope, ac­quir­ing a com­plex in Anag­ni, Italy, south­west of Rome, that will sig­nif­i­cant­ly ex­pand its ca­pac­i­ty on the con­ti­nent.

There are no terms be­ing of­fered, but this is no small deal. The Anag­ni cam­pus em­ploys some 700 staffers, and Catal­ent is plan­ning to go right in — once the deal clos­es late this year — with a blue­print to build up the op­er­a­tions fur­ther as they ex­pand on oral sol­id, bi­o­log­ics, and ster­ile prod­uct man­u­fac­tur­ing and pack­ag­ing.

This is an un­com­mon deal, Catal­ent CEO John Chimin­s­ki tells me. But it of­fers a short­cut for rapid growth that cuts years out of de­vel­op­ing a green fields project. That’s time Catal­ent doesn’t have as the in­dus­try un­der­goes un­prece­dent­ed ex­pan­sion around the world.

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