Aspen announces massive PE investment
SOUTH Africa’s leading private pharmaceutical company, Aspen Pharmacare Holdings, has announced a massive R3-billion investment in three new facilities – two of them in Port Elizabeth and one in Cape Town.
The new Port Elizabeth facilities will create about 145 new positions, most of which will require skilled workers due to the highly specialised and regulated nature of the industry.
The company, which is based in the city, announced its expansion plans in its annual company report, which was released on Wednesday.
The JSE-listed entity’s new facilities – mainly for export production – will boost its already extensive array of products, which reach more than 150 countries from its 26 manufacturing facilities on six continents.
The latest investment in the two Port Elizabeth plants represents the company’s biggest-ever investment into new facilities in South Africa.
To further expand capacity, Aspen announced a new high-volume, highpotency, multipurpose Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) facility at its Fine Chemicals facility in Cape Town and a “high containment” facility in Port Elizabeth, where manufacturing trials are currently taking place.
The second new development in Port Elizabeth is a specialist sterile manufacturing facility, which is under construction at the company’s manufacturing hub in North End.
The new facilities represent capital investments of R1-billion, R1.4-billion and R900-million, respectively.
The two Port Elizabeth facilities – which will serve markets in the Asia-Pacific and European regions – are required to undergo a number of processes, including production testing and sterilisation and “stabilisation”
processes, before they can be commissioned for production.
Aspen is a global supplier of generic and branded pharmaceuticals.
Its products, including generic antiretroviral treatments for HIV in South Africa and other markets, target a broad spectrum of acute and chronic conditions.
Aspen co-founder and chief executive Stephen Saad said the high containment facility in Port Elizabeth – which requires production in an exceptionally sterile environment – had been completed, with manufacturing trials now in progress.
“Construction of the additional specialist sterile manufacturing facility, which produces products such as eye drops, is progressing and a number of capacity-enhancement projects are also under way at this site,” he said.
“These capital projects will provide an important strategic advantage to the group by enabling it to add value to its expanding portfolio of products that require complex manufacture.”
Saad said the company had invested heavily in the solid-doses business, which involves the production of tablets, and this market segment had seen growth of around 60%.
“We expect more growth in this segment,” he said.
“We have also made significant acquisitions in the sterile products section and the investment in Port Elizabeth is our single biggest to date.
“These are very exciting developments for Aspen and we are very excited at the opportunities they will bring to the business.”
Saad said the company strategy going forward would entail a focus on key therapy areas.
“Anaesthetics have been identified as a therapeutic category which is aligned with the group’s strategic development plans,” he said.
“As a category of pharmaceuticals that primarily involves sterile manufacturing and is dispensed largely in hospitals and clinics, anaesthetics present an opportunity to leverage both Aspen’s existing hospital-focused sales force that is currently promoting thrombolytic products and, potentially in due course, sterile manufacturing capabilities,” he said.