The Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) sector has flousished in recent years as Big Pharma has shifted its attention to its core R&D activities and outsourced other supply chain components, including manufacturing, to independent CDMOs. In Europe the CDMO market is expected to reach a revenue of nearly USD 39.9 billion by the end of 2030, up from a revenue of close to USD 21.13 billion in 2020. Read on for a look at some of Europe’s leading CDMOs.
Lonza
2021 Revenue: USD 4.810 billion
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland and founded in 1897, Lonza operates across five continents. In 2020, the company recorded sales of CHF 4.5 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) from its core business of CHF 1.4 billion. After being one of the first companies to agree to help produce Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine in 2020, in 2021, the company announced a USD 935 million plan to ramp up production capacity at its sites in Europe and the US.
Fareva
2021 Revenue: USD 2.137 billion
French CDMO, Fareva, is an independent family-owned group founded in 1990 with production sites in 11 countries. The firm’s turnover in 2019 was EUR 1.81 billion. Fareva has been beefing up its European production capacity for the past few years and in 2020 completed the acquisition of two aseptic production sites in Idron and Saint-Julien-en-Genevois, France, from the Pierre-Fabre Group. In 2021 Fareva acquired a Novartis plant in Unterach, Austria and MSD’s Mirabel production site in Riom (Puy-de-Dôme), France.
Recipharm
2021 Revenue: USD 1.303 billion
Since its inception in 1995, Sweden-based Recipharm has continued to grow and today boasts some 30 manufacturing sites in Europe (in Italy, France and Germany), India, Morocco, Israel and North America. In recent years, the firm has acquired a number of CDMOs across the globe, including UK-listed Consort Medical, making Recipharm one of the world’s largest CDMOs in terms of revenue.
Delpharm
2021 Revenue: USD 0.945 billion
Founded in 1988, Delpharm has grown steadily through acquisitions from large multinational pharmaceutical companies, including Bayer, Pfizer, and Sanofi, and today has 17 facilities that produce over 1 billion units per year. Significant recent acquisitions include the plant in Boucherville, Canada it purchased in 2022 from Novartis, the largest sterile injectable production facility in the country, and this year’s acquisitions of an infusion bag plant in Mouvaux, France and a sterile injectables site in Leiden, Holland.
Boehringer Ingelheim BioXCellence
2021 Revenue: USD 0.905 billion
Germany-based Boehringer Ingelheim serves more than 130 markets across three business areas: human pharmaceuticals, animal health and biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing. According to the company, its CDMO business, Boehringer Ingelheim BioXcellence, has 60 percent of the top 20 pharmaceutical and innovative biotech companies as customers. The firm’s recent investments include an over EUR 700-million production facility for Large Scale Cell Culture (LSCC) in Vienna, Austria, inaugurated in 2021, which constitutes the single largest investment in the firm’s history.
This is not an exhaustive list and the companies listed may offer other business areas. The revenues listed have been taken from Medicilon’s 2022 Top 10 Global CDMO Enterprises.
