Saltigo, which has just celebrated its first year as a wholly owned subsidiary of Lanxess, has delivered exactly what it had planned, according to managing director Dr Axel Westerhaus.
'We had very strong growth in the pharmaceutical area, and we see this high demand continuing in 2007,' he said. 'We have reacted already in terms of increasing cGMP capacity and we are planning also to enlarge certain capabilities in our Leverkusen plant to match increasing demand.'
Saltigo is now spending around Euro 10m on an additional production facility in Leverkusen, with production there expected to commence by the end of this year. The new multi-purpose plant contains a range of 2500-8000 litre steel and glass lined vessels and isolation equipment and has a total capacity of more than 200 tonnes a year.
The company is also planning to improve its industrial structure in terms of debottlenecking and further upgrading of its production facilities in Leverkusen and Dormagen, Westerhaus added. To this end, Lanxess is planning a further €30m spend in addition to the €50m already invested.
The pharmaceutical business line achieved double-digit sales growth last year and a number of new projects have been launched with key pharmaceutical companies in Europe and the US. In particular the company sees significant expansion potential for Saltigo's pharmaceutical custom manufacturing in the US market.
'Recently, many innovative pharmaceutical projects have originated in small pharmaceutical companies in North America. Projects in the early life-cycle phases of products - characterised by lively patent registration activity and proprietary synthesis processes - are a particularly attractive area of activity for Saltigo,' said Ann Gidner, head of marketing & sales in the business line Pharma.
'We are where the innovation takes place and 50% of the innovation in this industry comes out of American companies,' Westerhaus confirmed. 'We are here at Informex to ensure that our name and our company is seen as a strong, reliable player in this market.
'After a phase of restructuring and reorganization, Saltigo is now ideally positioned not only to more efficiently develop its existing customer contacts throughout the world, but also to appeal to new customers and market segments.'