February 18, 2011 -- When Pharma companies choose an outsourcing partner, they are looking for a responsible organisation with an ‘end to end’ service that provides quality, reliability, innovation and excellence in development, manufacturing and logistics - as well as a first rate customer experience.
NextPharma, a recent acquisition by an affiliate of Sun European Partners, is uniquely positioned to be a leading outsourcing partner for development, manufacturing, packaging, and distribution of a broad range of products and formulations for its customers from tablets and capsules to antibiotics, hormones and controlled release medicines. NextPharma has an established leadership position in the high technology area of injectables manufacturing, with particular expertise in product development and manufacture of oncology medicines.
NextPharma focuses on lowering costs and improving quality through its efficiencies and through developing alliances and partnerships with other key players in the contract manufacturing industry in order to provide its customers with a single interface that helps them to realise their outsourcing projects, in the most efficient timeframe, at the lowest cost and the highest quality.
Leadership
NextPharma was formed following an idea from Henry Wendt former Chairman and CEO of Smith Kline Beecham, who felt that margins in the Pharma industry allowed their manufacturing processes to be grossly inefficient. He believed that the Pharma industry would follow other industries, such as the automobile and electronics industries into outsourcing which led to him forming NextPharma in 2000, since it was formed from a group of disparate businesses and assets then it has thrived under the leadership of its CEO Bill Wedlake.
Bill Wedlake joined NextPharma in 2000 as CFO after a successful career in financial management spanning more than twenty years. He became Chief Executive Officer in 2003 and has developed NextPharma to be one of the strongest brands in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology outsourcing industries.
Bill Wedlake says about NextPharma’s approach: ‘The ‘one stop solution’ model offered by NextPharma helps improve client profitability by reducing both the cost and time to market of the product. This service increases client margins by reducing the number of supply chain providers and freeing up client resource to concentrate on their own key strategic strengths of research and marketing.
He continued: ‘The pharmaceutical industry is characterised by development facilities and manufacturing plants operating at low utilisation rates with many products in the later stages of their life cycles. This low level of utilisation has had a negative impact on pharmaceutical companies’ operating margins, and as a result, they are increasingly outsourcing development, manufacturing and distribution, closing inefficient sites and facilities, many of which are simply located in places due to historical circumstances rather than being part of a focussed strategy. The biotechnology industry has no traditional manufacturing base and is therefore ideally suited to work with outsourcing organisations such as NextPharma’.
Sun European Partners
NextPharma has recently been acquired by an affiliate of Sun European Partners, LLP, the European adviser to Sun Capital Partners, Inc. This acquisition will enable the company to capitalise on its existing position of strength through further investment in and expansion of its facilities.
Matthias Gundlach, Vice President of Sun European Partners said: “We are delighted by this acquisition. NextPharma is well positioned to benefit from the changing face of the drug industry, in particular using drug development and manufacturing outsourcing. It provides a good foundation from which to build the business organically and by acquisition.”
Business activities
NextPharma has grown to offer a full range of services to its customers extending from development to manufacturing and logistics. This ‘one stop solution’ business model offers global pharmaceutical, generic and biotechnology companies a strategic ‘end to end’ service from initial stages of dosage form development through sourcing APIs to manufacturing and distribution (logistics). This integrated service is illustrated below:
Business Divisions
NextPharma’s integrated ‘one stop solution’ service is provided through three divisions as follows:
Product Development Services - this division supports customers development of their new drug candidates from non-clinical stages (i.e. before the drug is given to humans) through the provision of clinical trial materials for testing in phases one through three (the human testing phases of drug development) and registration batches, to assistance with the preparation of a regulatory file necessary for drug approval. The services provided also include a recently expanded clinical trials labelling and packaging unit.
Contract Manufacturing Services - this division provides commercial manufacturing and packaging of drug products that have successfully moved through clinical trials (in Product Development Services) or have been ‘transferred in’ from a pharma company or other CMO. Products manufactured here range from simple vitamin products sold “Over the Counter” to some of the world’s most important life enhancing prescription drugs.
Cold Chain and Logistics Services - this division offers warehousing and distribution services of customer products to pharmaceutical wholesalers, pharmacies, hospitals and doctors. All products are held in temperature controlled storage from minus 80 c to ambient temperatures.
Key Account and Project Management
NextPharma has a strong focus and high level of expertise in managing customers’ relationships through its experienced team of Key Account Managers. Their emphasis is on developing long term relationships with key accounts at all levels of management and identifying and delivering mutually beneficial projects.
NextPharma has a specialist team of project managers who are responsible for organizing and managing its clients’ resources in such a way that projects are completed within defined scope, quality, time and cost constraints. Whether new business or a product transfer, all projects are assigned a dedicated and specially trained Project Manager who will be responsible for managing all client projects from inception to completion ensuring that critical time lines and costs are met, technical formulation and production issues are resolved quickly and efficiently and regulatory requirements are met in full.
Quality and a culture of continuous improvement NextPharma has an integrated approach to quality management and has a strategic quality system focussed on providing compliance with global regulatory requirements in order to promote a culture of continuous improvement.
This system has the objective of:-
- providing global regulatory compliance
- enhancing NextPharma’s profile, global reach and customer satisfaction
- improving financial performance and resource utilisation
NextPharma works to ensure alignment of its Quality System with its overall strategic plan. The development of the NextPharma Quality System is a company-wide initiative promoting inter-site co-operation and best practice.
Values
NextPharma’s core values dictate how the employees of NextPharma work with each other, its customers and other stakeholders. They describe what matters to NextPharma and how the company operates as an organization. These values form the bedrock on which NextPharma builds its business success and its management’s aim is to always act in accordance with them. NextPharma creates customer confidence through its focus on quality, reliability, innovation and responsibility.
Quality Excellence – value
Reliability Integrity – always doing what we say we are going to do
Innovation Originality - continuous improvement
Responsibility Accountability
About NextPharma
NextPharma Technologies, headquartered in the UK and founded in 2000, is a world class outsourcing partner to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
NextPharma offers a full range of services from early phase product development, through clinical trial packaging to high volume commercial manufacturing. NextPharma is a world leader in lyophilization, sterile fill finish and pellet technologies and in specialist product manufacturing including cytotoxics, hormones, penicillins, cephalosporins and narcotics. NextPharma’s sterile development and production offers a full range of drug delivery technologies including pre-filled syringes, vials and ampoules.
NextPharma operates globally with seven product development centres, seven manufacturing plants and six temperature controlled storage and distribution sites across Europe and North America, supplying customers in North America, Europe and Japan.
NextPharma has 1,200 employees dedicated to serving over 200 customers world wide and a customer base, which includes many of the world’s leading pharmaceutical, specialty pharma and biotech companies.
NextPharma has a proven track record in almost all pharmaceutical technologies and product forms and in addition to the specialist areas above, has capabilities in solids, semi-solids, liquids, sprays and dry dosage form technologies.
All NextPharma sites are either FDA inspected, in the process of upgrade for inspection or targeted for upgrade for inspection.
About Sun European Partners, LLP
Sun European Partners, LLP is the European adviser to Sun Capital Partners, Inc., a leading U.S.-based private investment firm focused on leveraged buyouts, equity, debt, and other investments in market-leading companies that can benefit from its in–house operating professionals and experience. Affiliates of Sun Capital Partners, Inc. have invested in 260 companies worldwide with combined sales in excess of $40 billion since the inception of Sun Capital Partners, Inc. in the U.S. in 1995. Sun Capital Partners, Inc. has offices in Boca Raton, Los Angeles, and New York, as well as affiliates with offices in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg, Shanghai and Shenzhen. For more information, please visit www.SunEuropeanPartners.com
