Dose CMO industry performing strongly

LONDON—The dose-manufacturing-focused market for contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) in 2018 grew 6.4 percent from its 2017 value. This growth rate is a return to the 5 percent to 7 percent year-on-year rate observed in the market in the five years from 2010 to 2014, and is the highest year-on-year growth rate since 2012, according to data and analytics company GlobalData. Moreover, private equity has shown a continued interest in the dose CMO industry, the company says.

Three acquisitions of dose CMOs by private equity firms occurred in 2018, similar to the average number of yearly private equity firm acquisitions across the 2013 to 2017 period, which was 3.4 acquisitions per year. Despite the changing nature of medicines and challenges to the dose CMO industry, it is still perceived as lucrative by investors. says GlobalData.

These insights comes out of one of the company’s latest reports, “PharmSource—Contract Dose Manufacturing Industry By The Numbers: Composition, Size, Market Share And Outlook.”

Another takeaway point from the report is that as biologics become increasingly approved and utilized, injectables will be used more often. However, these are more difficult to manufacture while retaining sterility, which requires techniques such as terminal sterilization, aseptic filtration and aseptic formulation. Most injectable oncology drugs will also require containment for manufacture. These require expensive specialist offerings and expertise that not every CMO will be able to perform.

“As drug production becomes increasingly complex from a molecular and regulatory standpoint, innovative CMOs stand to prosper,” said Adam Bradbury, a pharma analyst at GlobalData. “This is especially true as the drugs pipeline favors the development of high potency active pharmaceutical ingredients for oncology, where the facilities, expertise and equipment related to their manufacture are prohibitively expensive for smaller pharma companies.”