Bayer to dump $2.26B into manufacturing realignment as it says goodbye to some sites – Endpoints News

Bay­er is ready to pour bil­lions more in­to its phar­ma man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions, but with that, it will cut ties with sev­er­al sites it al­ready owns.

Bay­er will in­vest more than $2.26 bil­lion in its phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing over the next three years, as it ex­pands in both Eu­rope and the US. Ex­pan­sions in Bergka­men, Berlin, Lev­erkusen, Weimar and Wup­per­tal were al­ready an­nounced ear­li­er in March in a Ger­man-on­ly state­ment, stat­ing that it will mod­ern­ize fa­cil­i­ties and work on “more in­ten­sive col­lab­o­ra­tion” with area uni­ver­si­ties and star­tups.

The com­pa­ny will trans­form its sup­ply cen­ters in Berlin, Lev­erkusen and Bergka­men in­to cen­ters for ex­cel­lence for par­enter­als, non-hor­mon­al solids and con­trast me­dia and hor­mone prod­ucts, re­spec­tive­ly. A sup­ply cen­ter in Wup­per­tal will be turned in­to a site for new pro­duc­tion tech­nolo­gies. All these sites will see a com­bined in­vest­ment of rough­ly $1.1 bil­lion. Mean­while, its Berkley, CA, site will see an ex­pan­sion as well. It is al­ready build­ing a $200 mil­lion cell ther­a­py site in Berke­ley.

To do so, Bay­er has di­vest­ed a pro­duc­tion site in Karachi, Pak­istan, as a part of analy­sis of what man­u­fac­tur­ing prac­tices no longer align with long-term goals. Its site in São Paulo Can­cioneiro, Brazil will be trans­ferred to a new op­er­a­tor, and Bay­er plans to do the same with parts of the Bergka­men, Wup­per­tal and Berlin sites.

Bay­er has al­ready put up 95 acres of its Creve Coeur, MO, cam­pus up for sale, as it told the St. Louis Busi­ness Jour­nal that it en­vi­sions a fu­ture with less phys­i­cal of­fice space. In 2020, WuXi STA pre­pared to take over Bay­er fa­cil­i­ties in Lev­erkusen and Wup­per­tal to start and fin­ish the year.

“These in­vest­ments in­to our sup­ply net­work will sup­port the suc­cess of our com­pa­ny’s phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal’s busi­ness long term,” said Hol­ger Wein­tritt, head of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals prod­uct sup­ply. “As an im­por­tant el­e­ment of our over­all phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal busi­ness strat­e­gy we will fo­cus our man­u­fac­tur­ing ac­tiv­i­ties on sup­port­ing fu­ture key ar­eas of growth in which we aim to change the treat­ment par­a­digm for pa­tients. All of our com­pa­ny’s new tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms and modal­i­ties will ben­e­fit from this in­vest­ment.”

All this comes months af­ter the an­nounce­ment that the Big Phar­ma would drop $460 mil­lion in­to two man­u­fac­tur­ing sites to ex­pand its pro­duc­tion ca­pa­bil­i­ties for con­tra­cep­tives to low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries. That deal fea­tured Bay­er ex­pand­ing one site in Turku, Fin­land, and build­ing an­oth­er in Ala­juela, Cos­ta Ri­ca, to pro­duce hor­mon­al im­plants and in­trauter­ine sys­tems. Bay­er has a goal of pro­vid­ing 100 mil­lion girls and women with ac­cess to fam­i­ly plan­ning by 2030. The new site in Cos­ta Ri­ca will start man­u­fac­tur­ing by 2024, the com­pa­ny said, while the Fin­land lo­ca­tion should be good to go by 2025.

Cell and gene ther­a­py will be the fo­cus for Bay­er’s lat­est an­nounce­ment. The bil­lions will go to­ward tech­nolo­gies, au­toma­tion, and dig­i­tal­iza­tion to help up­scale its man­u­fac­tur­ing.