Lonza: Positive start to 2018, driven by expanding healthcare businesses
04 May 2018 --- Lonza has reported a “positive” start to 2018 led by the businesses along the healthcare continuum. The former Capsugel business, now part of Lonza Pharma & Biotech and Lonza Consumer Health, has shown a strong performance following good progress on business and functional integration, the company reports, without giving any details on financial figures. For the coming months, Lonza has announced plans to expand facilities in the US.
A company statement notes that the growth drivers in Specialty Ingredients have been the Consumer Health and Nutrition business, including legacy Capsugel offerings, and the composite materials business in Consumer Resources & Protection. In Pharma & Biotech, both the biologics and the small-molecule businesses proved to be growth drivers with ongoing demand for clinical and commercial offerings.
“Our businesses along the healthcare continuum produced positive results. Former Capsugel businesses, in particular, performed above our expectations both versus prior year and on a run-rate basis and contributed to our core activities,” says Richard Ridinger, Lonza’s CEO, adding that Lonza continues to invest in state-of-the-art technological advances so that Lonza has the footprint that meets customers' diverse needs.
During the recent grand-opening ceremony in Pearland, TX (US), Lonza unveiled the first-of-its-kind cell-and-gene-therapy manufacturing facility with capacity to produce treatment for thousands of patients suffering from rare genetic disorders or life-threatening diseases.
Lonza has also announced that it is investing in new mid-scale assets in its Portsmouth, NH (US) site for commercial biomanufacturing to meet strong demand and to complement existing small- and large-scale assets within the Lonza network. Also this week, Lonza Consumer Health & Nutrition announced plans to expand its manufacturing operations at Greenwood, SC (USA), adding approximately 50,000 square feet of new manufacturing space.
Due to open in mid-year 2019, the expansion will enhance production of the company’s specialty ingredients, creating 30 new jobs in Greenwood County.
Part of an ongoing investment program, the Greenwood site currently produces empty capsules and finished dosage forms for the global biopharma and consumer health and nutrition markets.
Specialty Ingredients Segment
As of 1 January 2018, the Specialty Ingredients segment began operating in three distinct units: a Consumer Health division, a Consumer & Resources Protection division and a Water Care business unit.
The new Consumer Health division addresses the fast-moving consumer goods markets in nutrition, hygiene and personal care, and is showing good momentum across capsules and ingredients. In particular, two leading actives – UCII ingredient for joint health and Carnipure ingredient in sports nutrition – are reportedly benefiting from high demand. Growth in capsules and dosage forms is especially driven by clean-label specialty polymer solutions.
In Q1 combined offerings continued to attract interest, fueled by more than 30 new dietary supplement product concept launches that join Lonza’s specialty ingredients and former Capsugel's innovative dosage forms. Additional growth momentum is expected due to synergistic geographic expansion across all businesses.
Pharma & Biotech Segment
Lonza's biological businesses are performing strongly with ongoing high demand in Clinical Development and Manufacturing and with Mammalian and Microbial Commercial Manufacturing continuing to benefit from strong interest in all assets.
The small-molecule businesses continue to outperform on top- and bottom-line with considerable contributions from legacy Capsugel's newly added dosage form and delivery system (DFDS) technologies and with multiple projects in discussion that connect the active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) and DFDS offerings.
Pharma hard capsules from the former Capsugel business had a good start in 2018 with a new leadership team and integration activities with Lonza progressing well. Products and customer services in the bioscience business experienced positive demand, but comprehensive remediation work initiated in 2017 still had an impact on the business, the company reports.
Research and development (R&D) and innovation projects are ongoing with a sharp focus on accelerating cell-line construction and offerings in drug product services, digitalizing biological upstream and downstream manufacturing and continuing other process improvements.
