Sigma-Aldrich Acquires Iropharm to Expand cGMP Capacity
Sigma-Aldrich Corporation announced that it has acquired Honeywell International's Iropharm unit, a custom chemical synthesis business located in Arklow, Ireland. The addition of Iropharm will substantially increase SAFC's active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and pharmaceutical intermediates manufacturing capacities, enabling the Company to better support drug development from early-stage through commercialization.
With annual revenues of roughly $16 million, the mid-year addition will not have a material impact on the Company's sales. The acquisition is expected to help the Company meet its growth goals over the next several years and to be neutral to mildly accretive to earnings in 2006, with no initial charges. All current employees in good standing, including all of Iropharm's existing management team, will remain. Terms of the proposed purchase, which were not disclosed, were paid in cash.
The Iropharm facility in Arklow is an FDA inspected cGMP manufacturing site with total reactor capacity of 90,000 liters. The plant features one of the few commercial scale simulated moving bed (SMB) multi-column chromatographic separation units in the world. Used to resolve chiral compounds from racemic mixtures into pure enantiomers, SMB capability is one of the fastest methods to obtain enantiomerically pure drugs, increasingly important as the demand for single-enantiomer drugs continues to grow.
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