Lonza acquires leading micronization company Micro-Macinazione

04 Aug 2017 --- Lonza has announced that it has acquired Micro-Macinazione, one of Europe’s leading contract manufacturers providing micronization of active ingredients for the pharmaceutical and fine chemical industries. Micro-Macinazione, which had sales of around CHF20 million (US$20.7 million) in 2016, has 120 employees and is based in Monteggio, Switzerland.

Micro-Macinazione was purchased from Cross and the acquisition was completed on July 26, 2017. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Micronization via jet milling is an established technique for enhancing the overall bioavailability of drug products by reducing or controlling the particle size of the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API).

“With the acquisition of Micro-Macinazione, Lonza becomes the largest and most diversified provider of micronization services to the pharmaceutical industry. Micronization is an attractive technology for Lonza, given its applications across many of the high growth areas of the pharma market,” Lonza’s Pharma&Biotech COO Marc Funk, comments. “Micro-Macinazione provides micronization technology and expertise that complements our existing US capabilities and provides significant additional capacity to support our growth.”

“It's micronization technology can also add value to other areas of Lonza’ business, including Health and Nutrition ingredients and excipients, enhancing the appeal of this bolt-on acquisition, which strengthens our position across the healthcare continuum.”

More specifically, “in the Health and Nutrition (H&N) market, our customers, driven by consumer expectations, are increasingly looking for differentiated products with enhanced capabilities or features,” Lonza spokesperson Dominik Werner tells NutritionInsight. “Micronization is one of the ways this can be achieved, and as a result, we expect to see demand from both within Lonza and our external H&N customers for our micronization services.”

“We operate in a niche market with high growth expectations,” says Markus Arigoni, CEO of Micro-Macinazione. He adds that micronization, which reduces particle size, “is often seen as key to improving the bioavailability of the growing number of highly potent and complex active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), which an increasing number of pharma and biotech companies are looking to develop.”

“By combining with Lonza, we are creating a global leader with the ability to provide customers both in the US and Europe with access to the micronization technologies and manufacturing capabilities that they need to bring novel drugs to market faster and more efficiently,” Arigoni says.

Lonza says that its Pharma&Biotech customers are increasingly looking for external partners to help them assess early-stage compounds and to improve product design by using micronization and sub-micronization to address key challenges of API development. A key focus for the new combined business will be highly potent APIs (HPAPIs) where Micro-Macinazione’s pilot to commercial scale HPAPI offerings and Lonza’s recent HPAPI capacity expansion at Quakertown provide the capacity and expertise needed to serve this growing area of the pharmaceutical market.

The acquisition comes at a time of strong performance by Lonza. Last week, it reported an impressive H1 2017 performance, driven by both the Pharma&Biotech and Specialty Ingredients segments. “Lonza’s continued growth shows the company’s strength and ability to shape the future along the healthcare continuum with our customer-oriented market approach, ongoing operational excellence and new innovative offerings,” Richard Ridinger, CEO of Lonza said upon announcing the results.

By Paul Creasy