Sanofi has revealed plans to create a new Euopean company, dedicated to producing and marketing active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) to third parties.
The new standalone company is set to combine Sanofi’s API commercial and development activities with six of its European API production sites, based in Italy, Germany, UK, France and Hungary.
APIs are the essential molecules responsible for the beneficial effects used in the composition of any drug, and with increasing medicine shortages that “critically impact” patient care, Sanofi says that the new entity would contribute to supporting and securing API manufacturing as well as supply capacities for Europe and beyond.
When completed, the planned company will allegedly rank as the world's second largest API company with approximately €1 billion in expected sales by 2022, and 3,100 skilled employees.
Philippe Luscan, executive vice president, global industrial affairs at Sanofi, said “Based on the expertise and experience built over decades within our industrial network, this new entity would help ensure a greater stability in supplying drugs to millions of patients in Europe and beyond.
“With this endeavour, this new entity would be agile as a standalone company, and able to unlock its growth potential, especially in capturing new third-party sales and all the opportunities of a market growing at a pace of 6 % per year.”
Sanofi confirmed that by operating independently, the new entity plans to increase its sales to third parties and to expand its partnerships with other pharmaceutical companies in order to “take advantage of new growth opportunities” and have the ability to “deftly adapt to customer needs.”