PHARMACEUTICALS
Vertolaye is one of two EuroAPI sites in France
baseline by 2026 . It will cover 10 % of the site ’ s energy needs .) The site at Haverhill in the UK houses the world ’ s largest spraydrying facility , which was formerly dedicated to a single Sanofi product and is now available to the outside world . Finally , the facility in Brindisi , Italy , is dedicated to anti-infectives . These sites are generally situated in areas at the heart of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries where recruitment is no issue , Rotthier notes . There are many PhD chemists in the vicinity of Frankfurt ; Budapest has “ a very high reputation in chemical and biochemical engineering "; Haverhill is very close to Cambridge ; Vertolaye already has a “ very good core of scientists ”.
State of independence
With everything in place and “ ready for take-off ”, Rotthier says , the next job is to present EuroAPI to the world . A big part of this is showing that is not just an offshoot of Sanofi . Where many Big Pharma companies – formerly including Sanofi - have CMO operations marketing specific capabilities to non-competitors , EuroAPI is a true CDMO open to all . “ We can now focus on approaching all of the competitors to Sanofi plus all the biotech companies to really go for pre-clinical , Phase I and Phase II development molecules where we present the technology we have in-house and convince the customer that we can help them to produce a couple grams in the lab up to a kilo ,” Rotthier says . In 2021 , 120 RFPs came in , beating expectations . This contributed to 1H results for 2021 that were a modest improvement in most respects . Net sales were € 439.4 million against € 899.8 million in the 2021 financial year as a whole , while gross profit was up to € 81.5 million , 18.6 % of sales and core EBITDA was € 58.5 million ( 13.3 %). Perhaps most notably , non-Sanofi clients accounted for 52.1 % of sales in 1H 2021 . Going forward , EuroAPI expects to be driven both by its API and its CDMO business . The latter is the one with the potential for the fastest growth though the company is also investing in API products where the market demand is higher than its own capacity to expand , notably vitamin B 12 and hormones .
Bringing it back home
The other big opportunity comes through the ‘ repatriation ’ trend . Here , Rotthier sees two ‘ evolutions ’ in the market . “ We see innovators coming to us not just for quotes for APIs but especially for intermediates and registered starting materials , and also the products for which they outsourced some steps to India and China .” The trend to bringing some of this back was already present but was strengthened during the pandemic . The name EuroAPI was put in place to state that its manufacturing is entirely European , bringing with it the quality and supply chain security that it wanted to highlight to the market . There is no thought of bringing back high-volume , low-cost products like paracetamol , Rotthier stresses , “ but indeed , there are ways to make our processes more sustainable and more green , and in that way also repatriate some of the APIs that are complex to make ”. This is for the longer term , as finding such new routes and making the necessary investments will take years . His outlook is quite similar for the CDMO sector as a whole : the strong growth it has enjoyed for some years will continue . “ The reason is quite simple . There are more than 6,000 APIs in the world and we are already the biggest with our portfolio of about 200 . “ No company will ever have all the technology , chemical or biological to produce all the APIs . That is also important for those innovators . The outsourcing trend to help them invent those new molecules , which is the CDMO , is a continuing trend .” Companies , in his view , will continue to focus on their niches and specialities and no-one will ever have the ability to master it all . Even in generics , where a few major companies once sought to master the whole range , that business model has failed and specialisation is the name of the game . “ You see it also in the market shares of the API business . Ours , as the biggest , is 1.2 % - so yes , there is room for consolidation , so maybe someone could get to 4-5 %, but imagine what an R & D apparatus you would need even to get a 10-20 % share !” •
Laurence Bollack
HEAD OF GLOBAL MEDIA RELATIONS
EUROAPI k + 33 6 81 86 8019 J laurence . bollack @ euroapi . com j www . euroapi . com
20 SPECIALITY CHEMICALS MAGAZINE ESTABLISHED 1981