Business View - February 2016 75
MANUFACTURING
ture.” The company’s pilot plant opened in Nantong,
China in October 2015. By January of this year, the
commercial plant will be operational, as well.
Complementing its acquisitions, Siegfried continued
to shed any of its divisions that were not in line with
the company’s increased focus on moving away from
manufacturing its own products to become a full ser-
vice provider to others. Sidroga and the biotechnology
division had already been sold in 2007; the pharma-
ceutical production site at Zofingen was sold to Arena
Pharmaceuticals in 2008; and its PulmoJet subsidiary
in Munich, Germany, a maker of a dry powder inhaler,
was sold in 2010 to Sanofi-Aventis. “So, it was a clear
strategy to transform Siegfried from a mixed provider
of services under its own brand into a clear, full-fledged
service provider,” Späne affirms.
But there was one more major acquisition left to make.
This past fall, the Siegfried Group acquired significant
segments of BASF’s part API and customer manufac-
turing pharmaceutical supply business, by purchasing
three production units: Minden, Germany; Saint-Vul-
bas, France; and Evionnaz, Switzerland. This acqui-
sition represented the final major step in Siegfried’s
transformation process implemented over the last five
years. The company now has six drug substance sites
and three drug product sites across three continents.
“The final transform milestone of BASF gives us the
leverage and critical site mass, now, to be a very stra-
tegic CDMO partner to our big pharma clients,” says
Späne.
Today, Siegfried serves a diversified customer land-
scape with clients in mid-sized and emerging pharma
companies, as well as its major pharmaceutical part-
ners. Siegfried develops and manufactures APIs for
the research-based pharmaceutical industry, as well
