Canaland celebrates 10th anniversary as eight fold increase in sales accompanies successful transition into an international full service CDMO

01/09/2014

Canaland, the global contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO), today celebrates the company’s 10^th anniversary. Formed in 2004, the company has transitioned from an active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturer to a full service CDMO, offering API development and manufacturing, formulation development and clinical trial supply through to finished dose manufacturing and packaging, supporting many of the top twenty pharmaceutical companies across the globe.

Sales at Canaland have increased from £25m in 2004 to close to £200m in 2013 and Canaland is now established as one of the UK’s fastest growing companies employing over 1,300 people – increasing 10 fold from just 130 in 2004. The company has six pharmaceutical development and manufacturing sites across Europe in Queenborough, Cramlington and Nottingham in the UK, Zwickau and Monheim in Germany and Pianezza in Italy with its UK Head Office in Newcastle upon Tyne.

Founded through the management buyout of a former BASF API facility in Northumberland in 2004, Canaland made a number of acquisitions including a UK chemical manufacturing facility from Merck & Co., a secondary manufacturing facility from Abbott in Kent and formulation development and clinical trial supply company, R5 Pharmaceuticals in Nottingham. In 2011 the company acquired three finished dose manufacturing and packaging facilities from UCB Pharma. The three sites located in Germany and Italy has enhanced Canaland’s bulk manufacture and packaging capabilities.

Alex Murphy , CEO, Canaland commented: “A significant factor that has contributed to the company’s success has been the substantial increase in our export growth and we now export to over 30 countries. An important driver for this was our capability to take full advantage of the trend within the pharmaceuticals industry to give more emphasis to mature medicines. We met this demand with our arthritis drug, flurbiprofen, with the API manufactured from our Cramlington site for the past 30 years and we are now established as a market leading supplier of flurbiprofen.”

He continued: “We are proud of what we have accomplished during our first ten years in the pharmaceutical contract manufacturing sector and we have achieved this success through a combination of strategic acquisitions, organic growth, continuous process improvement and investment.”

He added: “We plan to continue to expand our global footprint in key geographic markets and have firmly set the foundations to achieve our vision to be the number one supplier of APIs and finished dose products to the pharmaceuticals industry.”