PharmaZell and Novasep announce the creation of a leading CDMO and API manufacturer

Raubling (Germany) & Lyon (France), April 7^th 2022 – PharmaZell, a leading supplier of highly resilient and specialty APIs, and Novasep, a major CDMO focused on complex small molecules and ADCs, announced today the closing of their merger, following exclusive negotiations initiated in September 2021. This strategic merger creates a technology driven, leading CDMO and API manufacturer.

Novasep’s assets, capabilities, experience and expertise are highly complementary to those of PharmaZell. Combining the two businesses will create a global company with a footprint in Europe, the United States and India. It will provide an industry leading, highly diversified, and differentiated CDMO platform and API manufacturing, relying on an innovative and differentiating array of technologies. In addition, the combination of these two groups will allow the new one to reach a critical size to support customers in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors across the entire drug life cycle, while guaranteeing proximity and quality of service to deliver appropriate therapies for the benefit of patients. The combined business will generate nearly €500m of revenues and employ more than 2,000 employees across ten production and R&D sites, with 7 in Europe, 2 in India and 1 in the USA.

The transaction is backed by PharmaZell’s current majority shareholder Bridgepoint.

Dr. Sylke Hassel, former CEO of PharmaZell and CEO of the new Group said: “Today is a very important step on our journey to better support our customers and the patients they serve. This merger is a significant opportunity to further improve our offering, providing a broader set of technologies, a global manufacturing footprint and an end-to-end lifecycle management.” 

Dr. Michel Spagnol, former CEO of Novasep who will join the Board of Directors said: “I am delighted to be joining the Board of Directors where I will contribute to the strategic direction of the new company. I have great confidence that the group will become a major player thanks to the complementarity of its offer and the combination of talents.  I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all Novasep's employees for their commitment and hard work during these past years and remain confident that they will continue to strongly contribute to the development of the new group.”

About Novasep

Novasep provides cost-effective solutions for the sustainable production of molecules for the life sciences. Novasep offers a comprehensive range of services including process development, turnkey purification systems and contract manufacturing. We specialize in challenging active molecules for pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical, fine chemical, food and functional ingredients, as well as fermentation and chemical commodities industries.  

About PharmaZell

PharmaZell is a market leader in the highly resilient and specialty API market where it has a diversified portfolio of over 70 APIs and enjoys leading industry positions in several products that treat respiratory, inflammatory, and liver diseases. Many of the company’s products require special handling procedures and/or technologies. Headquartered in Raubling (near Munich), PharmaZell operates four state-of-the-art production and R&D sites in Germany, Italy, and India with over 900 employees globally.