A WuXi AppTech spin­off will fi­nal­ly have a Eu­ro­pean fa­cil­i­ty un­der its belt af­ter buy­ing up a Bris­tol My­ers Squibb site, the com­pa­ny an­nounced Tues­day.

Minzhang Chen

WuXi STA, which launched as a CD­MO in 2003, will ac­quire Bris­tol My­ers Squibb’s site in Cou­vet, Switzer­land that spe­cial­izes in com­mer­cial-scale pro­duc­tion of var­i­ous cap­sules and tablet dosage forms. The com­pa­ny said in a press re­lease it will both en­hance and grow its man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pac­i­ties through a “world-class” fa­cil­i­ty.

“We are pleased to add the Cou­vet man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty to our grow­ing glob­al man­u­fac­tur­ing site net­work and look for­ward to work­ing with the tal­ent­ed team who share our fo­cus on ex­cel­lence and a pa­tient-cen­tered ap­proach,” WuXi STA CEO Minzhang Chen said in a state­ment. “The ac­qui­si­tion will al­low WuXi STA to bet­ter serve Eu­ro­pean mar­kets and sup­port our glob­al cus­tomers to de­liv­er in­no­v­a­tive med­i­cines and treat­ments to pa­tients around the world.”

Bris­tol My­ers Squibb EVP Lou Schmuk­ler said in a state­ment that he be­lieved WuXi STA would be suc­cess­ful in tak­ing over the Cou­vet fa­cil­i­ty, but that the trans­fer was al­so im­por­tant for his com­pa­ny’s fu­ture in the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket­place.

“This is an im­por­tant step in the on­go­ing evo­lu­tion of our man­u­fac­tur­ing net­work to sup­port our prod­uct port­fo­lio,” he said. “Switzer­land re­mains an im­por­tant strate­gic lo­ca­tion for Bris­tol My­ers Squibb, and we look for­ward to main­tain­ing a strong pres­ence in the Neuchâ­tel area.”

The Cou­vet site isn’t the on­ly one Bris­tol My­ers Squibb has un­loaded in re­cent years. In the sum­mer of 2019, the com­pa­ny sold its Anag­ni, Italy fa­cil­i­ty, and the 700+ em­ploy­ees who worked there at the time, to Catal­ent for an undis­closed amount.

Lou Schmuk­ler

The com­pa­nies an­tic­i­pate com­plet­ing the trans­ac­tion by Q2 2021, sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals and the sat­is­fac­tion of oth­er clos­ing con­di­tions—one of which is that the Cou­vet fa­cil­i­ty will con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing un­der the Bris­tol My­ers Squibb name un­til the i’s are crossed and the t’s are dot­ted. WuXi STA will ac­quire the site’s op­er­a­tions and as­sets, in­clud­ing the plant, equip­ment, and an un­spec­i­fied num­ber of em­ploy­ees.

Fi­nan­cial terms of the ac­qui­si­tion weren’t dis­closed Tues­day.

The for­ay in­to Eu­rope is one of the big­ger moves WuXi STA has made of late. Its last one came ex­act­ly 13 months ago when the com­pa­ny an­nounced the open­ing of a large-scale oligonu­cleotide ac­tive phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal in­gre­di­ent man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in Changzhou, Chi­na. That mile­stone, the com­pa­ny said at the time, es­tab­lished the abil­i­ty to man­u­fac­ture those APIs from pre­clin­i­cal to com­mer­cial through a sin­gle com­pre­hen­sive plat­form.

The Endpoints News team is continuing to track IPO filings for 2021, and we’ve designed a new tracker page for the effort.

Check it out here: Biopharma IPOs 2021 from Endpoints News

You’ll be able to find all the biotechs that have filed and priced so far this year, sortable by quarter and listed by newest first. As of the time of publishing on Feb. 25, there have already been 16 biotechs debuting on Nasdaq so far this year, with an additional four having filed their S-1 paperwork.

California’s Avid Bioservices now has two simultaneous expansion projects underway as the CDMO’s projections for customer demand sparked the launch this week of the second phase of building out its Myford facility.

Avid expects construction on the second phase, which will be known as its Myford South facility to take 18 to 24 months to complete at a cost of roughly $45 million to $55 million, it said in a press release.

When former President Donald J. Trump was voted out of office Nov. 2, his gung-ho effort to “onshore” drug manufacturing was left mostly up in the air. Joe Biden has been mostly mum on whether he would continue that effort, but a new executive order could provide a clue — at least in a few months.

In an order signed Wednesday, Biden demanded a 100-day governmental review of key supply chains, including for active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) used in American drugs.

S&P Global has taken a look at the dominant forces shaping the pharma market and come to the conclusion that there will be more downgrades than upgrades in 2021 — the 8th straight year of steady decline.

But it’s not all bad news. Some things are looking up, and there’s still plenty of money to be made in an industry that enjoys a 30% to 40% profit margin, once you factor in steep R&D expenses.