End­points we­bi­nar: In­side the “One Lon­za” strat­e­gy: Re-en­gi­neer­ing the fu­ture of CD­MO

In End­points News’ lat­est fire­side chat, CEO of Lon­za, Wolf­gang Wien­and, sat down with End­points’ Ar­salan Arif, to share key in­sights in­to the com­pa­ny’s “One Lon­za” re­struc­tur­ing strat­e­gy. The new com­pa­ny struc­ture, which will be op­er­a­tional by April 2025,  is de­signed to po­si­tion Lon­za as a pure-play CD­MO while stream­lin­ing op­er­a­tions and en­hanc­ing cus­tomer val­ue. Wien­and ex­plained how “One Lon­za” aims to uni­fy the com­pa­ny un­der three Busi­ness Plat­forms to bet­ter align with in­dus­try trends and op­ti­mize ser­vices for bio­phar­ma clients.

One key high­light of the dis­cus­sion was the ac­qui­si­tion of Roche-Genen­tech’s Va­cav­ille site, which was a strate­gic move aimed at ex­pand­ing mam­malian cell man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty in re­sponse to in­creas­ing bi­o­log­ics pro­duc­tion de­mand. Af­ter the deal closed in Oc­to­ber 2024, Wien­and shared that the tran­si­tion of the Va­cav­ille site was seam­less, tech­ni­cal in­te­gra­tion is now com­plete and new cus­tomer con­tracts are al­ready in place. Dur­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, Wien­and re­flect­ed on how his ex­per­tise in chem­istry in­forms his lead­er­ship strat­e­gy, fos­ter­ing trust with both clients and em­ploy­ees. He em­pha­sized Lon­za’s com­mit­ment to in­no­va­tion and in­vest­ment in mul­ti­ple drug modal­i­ties, with plans to pur­sue both or­gan­ic growth and M&A op­por­tu­ni­ties to sus­tain its lead­er­ship in the evolv­ing CD­MO land­scape.

Key Take­aways

• One Lon­za strat­e­gy launch­es in April 2025, re­struc­tur­ing in­to three Busi­ness Plat­forms.
• The 2024 ac­qui­si­tion of Roche-Genen­tech’s Va­cav­ille site ex­pands Lon­za’s bi­o­log­ics ca­pac­i­ty, with full in­te­gra­tion and new cus­tomer con­tracts in place.
• Lon­za’s fu­ture growth will be dri­ven by or­gan­ic growth and M&A op­por­tu­ni­ties

Fire­side chat: Q&A

• Ar­salan Arif, CEO and Co-Founder, End­points News
• Wolf­gang Wien­and, CEO, Lon­za

This con­ver­sa­tion has been edit­ed for length and clar­i­ty.

Ar­salan Arif: Hi every­body, I’m Ar­salan Arif, the pub­lish­er and founder of End­points News, and thank you for join­ing us to­day. It’s my plea­sure to wel­come Wolf­gang Wien­and, the CEO of Lon­za, for a fire­side chat. And let’s just get right in­to it. You joined Lon­za in Ju­ly last year, and in De­cem­ber you un­veiled your new One Lon­za strat­e­gy. Could you just tell us a lit­tle bit more about what that means for the End­points au­di­ence, please?

Wolf­gang Wien­and: Yeah, hap­py to do so, Ar­salan, and thanks for hav­ing me in the first place. No, in­deed. I joined Lon­za, a great team ac­tu­al­ly on Ju­ly 1st last year. It hasn’t been a bor­ing time since then, I have to say, but in a very good way. We worked hard, to­geth­er with the ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team and the broad­er se­nior lead­er­ship team, to ac­tu­al­ly get clar­i­ty about our vi­sion as a com­pa­ny, where do we want to take Lon­za, then ac­tu­al­ly what the right strat­e­gy is to get us where we want to get as a com­pa­ny. And then ask­ing our­selves what is the most ap­pro­pri­ate op­er­at­ing mod­el which helps to ful­fill the strat­e­gy, and then talk about ex­e­cu­tion. And all that we went through and then shared in the mid­dle of De­cem­ber, first in­ter­nal­ly, and then al­so ex­ter­nal­ly to the fi­nan­cial mar­kets. Maybe very quick­ly in a fast-for­ward fash­ion, tak­ing us through that vi­sion, be­ing Lon­za is the pi­o­neer and the mar­ket leader in the CD­MO in­dus­try, set­ting the pace with cut­ting-edge sci­ence, smart tech­nol­o­gy, and lean man­u­fac­tur­ing.

It’s a pret­ty rich state­ment, and I prob­a­bly shouldn’t take you through all of it, but es­sen­tial­ly two things are prob­a­bly clear, and are clear­ly de­fined al­so by stat­ing this as our vi­sion. First of all, we want to trans­form our­selves in­to a pure play CD­MO. So when I en­tered the or­ga­ni­za­tion and took a look at the busi­ness­es, Lon­za was or­ga­nized in­to four di­vi­sions. But in re­al­i­ty, if you ac­tu­al­ly take a clos­er look, you es­sen­tial­ly see two dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­els. One be­ing a prod­uct busi­ness mod­el, our cap­sules and health in­gre­di­ents busi­ness CHI, which ac­tu­al­ly is a great busi­ness, mar­ket lead­ing, and al­so su­pe­ri­or in terms of tech­nol­o­gy and mar­gin, but a prod­uct busi­ness, not a CD­MO busi­ness. And then three di­vi­sions, which are all in the end ad­her­ing to the same busi­ness mod­el, which is the CD­MO busi­ness mod­el. And we thought when tak­ing a clos­er look, while be­ing a great busi­ness CHI, that this is not ful­ly ben­e­fit­ing from what ac­tu­al­ly makes us spe­cial at Lon­za, which we de­fined in an­oth­er work­ing group, as a Lon­za en­gine.

So re­al­ly the core com­pe­ten­cies, the unique set of ca­pa­bil­i­ties that we have as Lon­za, which ac­tu­al­ly makes us spe­cial in that space, and makes us hope­ful and con­fi­dent that we will be able to de­liv­er out­stand­ing val­ue to our cus­tomers, to our share­hold­ers, and to our peo­ple, our em­ploy­ees. So that was the first step in terms of get­ting clar­i­ty, where we want to play, where we are not the best, which is CHI. And we took the de­ci­sion to ac­tu­al­ly ex­it that busi­ness at the ap­pro­pri­ate point in time, in the best in­ter­est of our share­hold­ers.

Then it was about the CD­MO busi­ness mod­el, with the am­bi­tion to ac­tu­al­ly stay the mar­ket leader and fur­ther stay ahead of the wave, and then ask­ing our­selves ac­tu­al­ly, how to fur­ther im­prove and evolve as a mar­ket lead­ing CD­MO. And that led to our de­ci­sion to re­shape our op­er­at­ing mod­el and go for three busi­ness plat­forms in a some­what dif­fer­ent ad­just­ed com­po­si­tion with a uni­fied or­ga­ni­za­tion­al struc­ture across all three dif­fer­ent busi­ness plat­forms, which is now, start­ing in April 2025, go­ing to be a func­tion­al or­ga­ni­za­tion per busi­ness plat­form, and al­so stronger group func­tions in or­der to pro­vide sys­temic so­lu­tions, pro­vide sup­port to all the busi­ness­es, and mak­ing sure that we run and op­er­ate our as­sets in a very con­sis­tent, har­mo­nized way, to even­tu­al­ly of course sup­port our ef­fi­cien­cy tar­gets. But first and fore­most cre­ate the best cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence when work­ing to­geth­er with Lon­za, as pos­si­ble.

So that ac­tu­al­ly has been the thought process that we went through. The team right now is re­al­ly work­ing hard to pre­pare the cut over from the cur­rent op­er­at­ing mod­el with four di­vi­sions, in­to the new mod­el, start­ing April. But ac­tu­al­ly I’m ex­treme­ly hope­ful and even im­pressed by how much work the teams can ac­tu­al­ly ab­sorb while still be­ing con­fi­dent and look­ing for­ward to the change which is ahead of us. So we will have that fresh start for good, start­ing in April this year.

Ar­salan Arif: So, won­der­ful. That’s the im­ple­men­ta­tion up­date. Ba­si­cal­ly you un­veiled the strat­e­gy about three months ago, and we’re look­ing to April right now for that.

Wolf­gang Wien­and: Right.

Ar­salan Arif: So un­der this new struc­ture, in­te­grat­ed bi­o­log­ics is go­ing to be the largest busi­ness plat­form. Giv­en that, are there any ma­jor in­dus­try trends that you are ob­serv­ing and re­spond­ing to, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the bi­o­log­ic sec­tor?

Wolf­gang Wien­and: Yeah, in­deed. And let’s say our view on the mar­ket, not on­ly as it is to­day, but al­so how we be­lieve that ac­tu­al­ly the most suc­cess­ful, most com­pet­i­tive of­fer­ings for our clients will evolve over the com­ing years. We ac­tu­al­ly in­te­grat­ed this think­ing in­to how we de­signed our or­ga­ni­za­tion. And maybe as a brief segue, the ide­al set­up in our view for the CD­MO busi­ness of Lon­za will ac­tu­al­ly be one busi­ness, one busi­ness unit. Be­cause it is the same busi­ness mod­el, es­sen­tial­ly just build­ing on dif­fer­ent tech­nolo­gies. And ac­tu­al­ly that is some­thing which makes Lon­za spe­cial, we have them all, right? We are present and lead­ing or even the leader in any rel­e­vant phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal modal­i­ty. But in the end, the com­pa­ny is too large to ac­tu­al­ly run it as one busi­ness unit, so to say. So we had to break it down in a way that ac­tu­al­ly those tech­nolo­gies, those ac­tiv­i­ties which are most fre­quent­ly asked for in a com­bined fash­ion, are as close to each oth­er as pos­si­ble.

And in­deed what we will call in­te­grat­ed bi­o­log­ics, start­ing April, is the com­bi­na­tion of this large ma­chine of mam­malian [cell] man­u­fac­tur­ing, of mon­o­clon­al an­ti­bod­ies, and oth­er pro­teins, to­geth­er with our asep­tic fill-fin­ish ac­tiv­i­ties, which is where we see most in­roads, high­est in­ter­ests of our cus­tomers for the in­te­grat­ed of­fer­ing of drug sub­stance man­u­fac­tur­ing and then tak­ing that drug sub­stance fur­ther down the val­ue chain and de­liv­er­ing asep­ti­cal­ly filled-fin­ished drug prod­ucts. So that’s a re­flec­tion on that, and that is how we fore­see the mar­ket to evolve over the next years. Be­cause in the end, be­sides many oth­er things, what our of­fer­ing, our val­ue con­tri­bu­tion to our clients, of course does, is we take over com­plex­i­ty, and we man­age that com­plex­i­ty in­ter­nal­ly. And the more of the val­ue chain we can ac­tu­al­ly take over, the eas­i­er we make the lives of our clients, and the more val­ue we cre­ate for them and al­so for Lon­za of course as well.

How­ev­er, as an ad­di­tion to that, while the asep­tic fill-fin­ish ac­tiv­i­ties, drug prod­uct ac­tiv­i­ties are part of the in­te­grat­ed bi­o­log­ics busi­ness plat­form, they of course are al­so avail­able as in­di­vid­ual ser­vices just for the drug prod­uct, but of course al­so, and we have a num­ber of great busi­ness­es in that area, al­so for oth­er modal­i­ties. So for ex­am­ple, man­u­fac­tur­ing the drug prod­uct for AD­Cs. AD­Cs be­ing part of a dif­fer­ent busi­ness plat­form, ad­vanced syn­the­sis. So that’s just the ex­pec­ta­tion that in the end, we as Lon­za need to be able to op­er­ate as one Lon­za, which is al­so the ti­tle, the head­line of our new cor­po­rate strat­e­gy, the “One Lon­za strat­e­gy”, if that makes sense, Ar­salan.

Arif: Yep. Very good. I want to ask you about a site ac­qui­si­tion that you made back in Oc­to­ber, the Va­cav­ille site in Cal­i­for­nia. So I un­der­stand it’s join­ing the in­te­grat­ed bi­o­log­ics busi­ness plat­form. So this site in Va­cav­ille, how does it help to ad­dress these trends that you just talked about for the ben­e­fit of your busi­ness and cus­tomers? And fur­ther­more, can you tell me more about the readi­ness of that site? Is it al­ready in­te­grat­ed in­to the Lon­za net­work? Is it al­ready up and run­ning for you?

Wien­and: Yeah, thanks. Great ques­tion, Ar­salan, hap­py to take you through that. First of all, and I be­lieve and ac­tu­al­ly we are con­vinced that we will make this sig­nif­i­cant ac­qui­si­tion of sig­nif­i­cant mam­malian [cell] man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ty a great suc­cess for our part­ners in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try, and as such al­so for our­selves and the Va­cav­ille team, it is a great site. I joined the team on day one when we ac­tu­al­ly closed the deal, and of­fi­cial­ly had the cut over from Genen­tech Roche to then Lon­za. While this be­ing a great cel­e­bra­tion with a lot of en­er­gy, which in it­self is a good sign in terms of the readi­ness of the Va­cav­ille team to re­al­ly join the Lon­za team and be­come an in­te­gral part of our bi­o­log­ics man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work, it al­so was based on suc­cess­ful work, be­cause at that point in time it was clear that the many weeks of prepa­ra­tion ac­tu­al­ly had paid off.

And the team in Va­cav­ille, to­geth­er with a num­ber of Lon­za col­leagues from oth­er man­u­fac­tur­ing sites, made it work per­fect­ly. So no hic­cups, con­tin­ued man­u­fac­tur­ing, our cus­tomers are hap­py, which ex­pect de­liv­ery, and al­so the peo­ple are hap­py in terms of switch­ing from one sys­tem to the oth­er. So the an­swer to your ques­tion – how far are we ad­vanced in terms of in­te­gra­tion? It is a con­tin­u­ous ef­fort. Tech­ni­cal­ly in­te­gra­tion is done, so all sys­tems es­sen­tial­ly switched over from Roche-Genen­tech to Lon­za. We have a num­ber of, let’s say, Lon­za peo­ple from oth­er sites now be­ing per­ma­nent­ly mem­bers of the Va­cav­ille team, we ac­tu­al­ly could take over, which I thought is a great sign of ap­pre­ci­a­tion and al­so sup­port of our think­ing. Es­sen­tial­ly 100% of the Va­cav­ille col­leagues, they all de­cid­ed to join us on our jour­ney. So it is re­al­ly now tech­ni­cal­ly ful­ly in­te­grat­ed, and it is avail­able to our clients.

And I ac­tu­al­ly toured the fa­cil­i­ty al­so once more in Jan­u­ary to­geth­er with a large strate­gic part­ner of Lon­za, the re­spon­si­ble per­son for glob­al op­er­a­tions at that big phar­ma com­pa­ny, and can tell, from our own ex­pe­ri­ence, how well re­ceived both the as­sets and al­so the Va­cav­ille team are by our clients. And we have been able to al­ready, a few weeks af­ter clos­ing the deal, to sign two com­mer­cial con­tracts al­ready. And there are nu­mer­ous oth­er vis­its and ne­go­ti­a­tions for ad­di­tion­al prod­uct in­takes go­ing on as we speak. So it’s ac­tu­al­ly great to see how well this project is go­ing on so far. And we are look­ing for­ward to ac­tu­al­ly in­tro­duc­ing and then com­mer­cial­ly man­u­fac­tur­ing the first prod­ucts, fur­ther down the road, mak­ing it avail­able as a high qual­i­ty, high-end com­mer­cial ca­pac­i­ty, in a short mar­ket for our clients.

Arif: So just to clar­i­fy that, so you’re ex­pect­ing the Va­cav­ille team to be a fast-paced, mul­ti-prod­uct, mul­ti-cus­tomer CD­MO, and what you’re telling us it’s well on its way to be­ing that and ready for cus­tomer projects?

Wien­and: Oh, the an­swer is yes, and I’ll be hap­py to maybe shed a bit of fur­ther light on my per­spec­tive, on that.

Wien­and: First of all, we all know that we all share that priv­i­lege of work­ing in the bio­phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try, one way or the oth­er, right? It’s just a great place for many rea­sons as we know. And while what we are do­ing phys­i­cal­ly on our sites, look­ing at the as­sets, the labs, and the work that we do, it ac­tu­al­ly pret­ty much looks the same as what the teams at our cus­tomers and their fa­cil­i­ties, if they have any, are do­ing there. But in re­al­i­ty, the busi­ness mod­el of course is a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent one. I mean, op­er­at­ing the cap­tive man­u­fac­tur­ing side as part of a glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work of a big phar­ma com­pa­ny has very dif­fer­ent key suc­cess fac­tors as com­pared to op­er­at­ing the same site, the same as­set, the same tech­nol­o­gy with­in the CD­MO be­ing cus­tomer fac­ing to 50, 100 cus­tomers, be­ing con­tin­u­ous­ly au­dit­ed, in­spect­ed by those cus­tomers as well. Hav­ing to stand up to sell your ca­pac­i­ty, your ca­pa­bil­i­ties, your teams, to­wards a num­ber of dif­fer­ent, al­so very proud cus­tomers, is a dif­fer­ent way of work­ing.

So we have been very mind­ful about this change, look­ing the same, not be­ing the same, and have ex­plained that and tak­en Va­cav­ille through that thought process, what it means. And I ac­tu­al­ly did that par­tial­ly my­self. And what I can tell is that the Va­cav­ille team – and you might ex­pect that from an Amer­i­can team any­way – su­per en­tre­pre­neur­ial, look­ing for­ward to the chal­lenge, and they want and will make it work, with the sup­port of the Lon­za net­work for sure as well. But ac­tu­al­ly, first of all, it’s a great ques­tion be­cause that as well can al­so get de­railed, but I think we have a very good chance of suc­cess and have first proof points that this team is ac­tu­al­ly up to the chal­lenge with­in Lon­za, with the sup­port of the Lon­za team, of course.

Arif: I want to ask you, be­cause you’re the new CEO at Lon­za, and just the process that you were talk­ing about with get­ting that site and chang­ing it over, and in­te­grat­ing with the Lon­za net­work, I want to ask about your back­ground, be­cause I find it a bit un­usu­al, your sci­en­tif­ic back­ground in the CD­MO space. How does your chem­istry ex­per­tise in­flu­ence your de­ci­sion-mak­ing in ar­eas like how you’re in­te­grat­ing this Va­cav­ille site or even in R&D in­vest­ment at Lon­za where your over­all lead­er­ship style…just re­al­ly how does that sci­en­tif­ic back­ground in­form your lead­er­ship style right now?

Wien­and: Yeah, in­deed, and maybe to add to that lat­er on, I al­so had the plea­sure to learn a bit about fi­nance as well, which is ex­cit­ing in its own way too. But that aside, to your ques­tion, and that’s now speak­ing for my­self, I’m not say­ing that it has to be like that at the top of every CD­MO, but what I found be­ing ben­e­fi­cial al­so for my lead­er­ship. In the end what we are do­ing is a high-tech thing or it’s a high-tech in­dus­try, and mak­ing de­ci­sions. It’s prob­a­bly hard to just base it on gener­ic in­sights be­cause it is al­ways re­lat­ed to tech­ni­cal risk, im­ple­men­ta­tion risk, sci­en­tif­ic risk, and hav­ing an un­der­stand­ing of how those risks might play out over time. At least hav­ing an idea about as­sess­ing them, in their ma­te­ri­al­i­ty or not, prob­a­bly is gen­er­al­ly help­ful in our busi­ness. An­oth­er ob­ser­va­tion is that, I’m al­so at our clients, I’m talk­ing a lot to our part­ners in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try, and these are most cas­es al­so tech­ni­cal peo­ple. And they want to know that their pre­cious in­no­va­tions, that they ac­tu­al­ly en­trust us with, hand over to Lon­za, that they’re ac­tu­al­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed, well un­der­stood, and that they are in good hands.

And so I guess ex­ec­u­tive lead­ers and CEOs be­ing al­so able to speak to that per­spec­tive of a prod­uct, of a re­la­tion­ship, and hav­ing an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the com­plex­i­ty of the sci­ence be­hind, prob­a­bly is help­ful. The last as­pect might be about lead­er­ship style. At Lon­za we are one Lon­za team, and we need every­one, right?. And a key trait, I would even say key pre­req­ui­site to ef­fi­cient­ly lead and ef­fec­tive­ly lead a large or­ga­ni­za­tion, is cred­i­bil­i­ty. And if peo­ple un­der­stand that al­so I as A CEO have an ap­pre­ci­a­tion, un­der­stand­ing, maybe even a good idea for a so­lu­tion of a tech­ni­cal prob­lem or how to run an as­set, that just makes the ex­change eas­i­er, cre­ates trust. And trust in the end is help­ing ef­fi­cien­cy be­cause you re­ly on each oth­er and you don’t ques­tion every­thing. And so I found it al­ways use­ful, and I ac­tu­al­ly like to do it. To walk the shop floor, talk to the peo­ple, un­der­stand why they’re do­ing it this way, maybe have an idea how to do it. And I think it just im­proves our way of in­ter­ac­tion and I guess al­so my own de­ci­sion mak­ing, if that makes sense.

Arif: Yeah, ab­solute­ly. That’s won­der­ful in­sight in­to your lead­er­ship style. I ap­pre­ci­ate that. Any­thing else that you want­ed to cov­er that we haven’t yet on the One Lon­za strat­e­gy?

Wien­and: Yeah, maybe a slight change as com­pared to the past. First of all, what com­pa­ny did I find on the 1st of Ju­ly? And hav­ing worked in the CD­MO in­dus­try for al­most two decades, of course I had a per­spec­tive on Lon­za, Lon­za be­ing the mar­ket leader in the space. I knew a num­ber of Lon­za peo­ple. But what be­came very clear to me –  this ac­tu­al­ly is not on­ly from the out­side but al­so from the in­side – if I look at the po­ten­tial of what we do, at the po­ten­tial of our peo­ple, Lon­za ac­tu­al­ly is a place of, I be­lieve, unique op­por­tu­ni­ty for our clients, but al­so for our­selves. How­ev­er, and as we dis­cussed at the be­gin­ning, we as an ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team and my­self as a CEO, we have cer­tain ideas. What else we can do to re­al­ly ful­ly ex­ploit the po­ten­tial of our com­pa­ny.

And we kind of phrased it around four key terms, which in the end all are sup­posed to serve what we from now on go­ing for­ward, we’ll call the “Lon­za en­gine.” So the thing that makes us spe­cial and re­al­ly is a set of unique com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tages, com­pared to the com­pet­i­tive land­scape. The four things be­ing, first of all, fo­cus. That was about tak­ing the de­ci­sion to be­come a pure play CD­MO, and prop­er­ly ex­it­ing the CHI busi­ness. It was about re­shap­ing the op­er­at­ing mod­el, serv­ing our strat­e­gy, serv­ing our vi­sion. It was about el­e­vat­ing [the busi­ness]. So this is about con­struc­tion and op­er­a­tion ex­cel­lence, fur­ther im­prov­ing on that path­way. And last­ly, about how to ex­pand.

So his­tor­i­cal­ly Lon­za has been able to ex­e­cute suc­cess­ful M&A, Va­cav­ille be­ing a great ex­am­ple, I be­lieve. But over­all, if there have been choic­es, I guess the slight pref­er­ence has al­ways been to build our­selves. And go­ing for­ward, based on my own ex­pe­ri­ence in the in­dus­try, and al­so what we fore­see as fu­ture trends, we will take an im­par­tial view on po­ten­tial growth op­por­tu­ni­ties, be it through or­gan­ic in­vest­ments where we think this is the most val­ue adding tra­jec­to­ry, but al­so mak­ing use of M&A op­por­tu­ni­ties in the mar­ket, in dif­fer­ent ar­eas, across modal­i­ties, there we will be ag­nos­tic and we will con­tin­ue to be a mul­ti-modal­i­ty CD­MO, and we will con­tin­ue to in­vest in­to all modal­i­ties, and very im­por­tant, al­so fu­ture modal­i­ties as Lon­za al­ways did.

The teams in the last 20, 30, maybe even 40 years, al­ways man­aged to cap­ture the next wave, and sup­port the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­dus­try with the lat­est man­u­fac­tur­ing tech­nolo­gies for new modal­i­ties. And that is some­thing that Lon­za will – al­so go­ing for­ward – con­tribute to the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal uni­verse, of course for the ben­e­fit of our clients, but of course for the ben­e­fit of Lon­za as well, so that we as a mar­ket lead­ing CD­MO will stay ahead of the wave al­so in the fu­ture.

Arif: That’s an in­ter­est­ing point that you made, be­cause you had said some­thing about Lon­za in the past, maybe had a pro­cliv­i­ty to want to build or make the thing it­self. I find that in busi­ness some­times that build or buy ques­tion can be one of the most im­por­tant things a CEO can ac­tu­al­ly in­flu­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a com­pa­ny like Lon­za, in­cred­i­bly im­por­tant, with a rich his­to­ry and sci­en­tif­ic his­to­ry. There is a bit of pride that comes from build­ing the thing with­in. I find that even with my own team some­times, some­times we’re look­ing to build a wheel again. It may be a beau­ti­ful wheel, but some­times some­one else has al­ready built it.

Wien­and: Yeah, which is true. And I think the best an­swer to that is to ac­tu­al­ly in a cu­ri­ous, and again, im­par­tial way, look at op­por­tu­ni­ties, leav­ing that all aside and try­ing to form your opin­ion on how to best serve a cer­tain busi­ness case, a cer­tain sci­en­tif­ic prob­lem, a cer­tain, com­mer­cial prob­lem. And in­deed, so it is prob­a­bly a slight shift, but one that I can say so far al­ready one, which ac­tu­al­ly the team is cu­ri­ous to ex­plore. And we al­so added a Chief Strat­e­gy Of­fi­cer to our ex­tend­ed ex­ec­u­tive lead­er­ship team who’s build­ing and train­ing them in a way. And I’m ac­tu­al­ly con­fi­dent that we will ac­tu­al­ly con­tin­ue to do both. Ex­ploit or­gan­ic growth op­por­tu­ni­ties as we did in the past, but as an add-on, al­so ex­ploit op­por­tu­ni­ties of in­or­gan­ic growth. And I think a very good ex­am­ple, for one kind of a deal that Lon­za might al­so do in the fu­ture, be­sides oth­er deal struc­tures and oth­er tar­gets re­lat­ed to that. But it is true in the end, the com­pa­ny is an or­gan­ism and you’ll kind of start to shape it so that it ac­tu­al­ly best serves its pur­pose and the needs of the clients.

Reg­is­ter to watch the full in­ter­view on de­mand.