IRELAND — Global contract development and manufacturing company, Sterling Pharma Solutions has completed the acquisition of Novartis’ manufacturing facility in Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork.

The CDMO will acquire the 111-acre site, which includes three API manufacturing buildings, as well as facilities to support development and scale-up.

The acquisition adds to Sterling’s ongoing expansions, growing from 300 employees across two sites in 2020 to over 1,300 employees across five facilities spanning Europe, the UK, and the US.

The deal was first announced in March 2022, and 350 staff at the site have now transferred to Sterling Pharma Solutions.

Sterling has already announced plans to invest in the Ringaskiddy facility to grow its contract development and manufacturing pipeline while also adding additional jobs to the site over the coming years.

The facility will also continue to manufacture a number of Novartis’ APIs for cardiovascular, immunology, and oncology medicines at Ringaskiddy as part of the deal.

This builds on Sterling’s several years of acquisition and investment growth in Dudley, near Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

Most notably, in October 2020, it acquired Alcami’s Germantown, Wisconsin facility, increasing its API development and manufacturing capacity, particularly for complex and hazardous requirements, as well as high potency.

Sterling opened its Material Science Centre in Dudley the same month. This added to its in-house capabilities of solid form services that it had previously outsourced, such as salt and co-crystal screening, polymorph screening, pre-formulation evaluation, and crystallization development.

It also finished the construction of its sterile manufacturing facility in South Carolina. Later in 2020, Sterling announced a new strategic partnership with ADC Biotechnology, a specialist in antibody-drug conjugates.

This entailed an unspecified but “significant” investment in ADC Bio, a company that specializes in antibody-drug conjugates with the goal of acquiring the company entirely.

Sterling announced the next phase of a multi-year investment strategy at Dudley in December 2021.

To meet the growing demand for small molecule API manufacturing, it planned to spend £10 million (US$12.2 million) by mid-2022 on new process development laboratories and commercial-scale manufacturing equipment.

Novartis is reorganizing several facilities in Ireland. It announced plans to cut around 400 jobs at its Dublin campus by the end of 2024 in October.

The layoffs at the Dublin facility are part of a major restructuring initiated by Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan in April, with the goal of saving US$1 billion in costs and laying off some key executives while combining the pharmaceutical and oncology units under one roof.

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