You took the reins of Cambrex in 2020; where do you want to take the company moving forward?
I started in September 2020, right in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) supporting the Pharmaceutical industry, we could not go virtual. Cambrex was highly involved in the production of antiviral therapies that were used in the early days, which means our staff came into the lab every day. Employee safety was our first priority, and our other priority was to support the demand for Covid-19 therapies themselves. As we progressed into 2021 and 2022, our focus has been in organic investment and our leadership position in small molecule API development and manufacturing. We are one of the biggest players in this field, and we have engineered a vision to add significant new capacity in the U.S. and Europe in order to meet the growing demand that we see for therapies in the Western world. In a kernel, our vision is about playing a role in supporting the development of new therapies that help society.
Most of your operations are in the small molecule area; what was the rationale behind your expansion into the large molecule field?
Large molecules require the same kind of services as small molecules; things such as drug substance manufacturing or formulation development. We have chosen to enter the large molecule space by adding analytical services that help companies in the process of developing new large molecule therapeutics. This is an area where customers were really beating down our door saying they had a huge demand for analytical testing services to help them get started, and therefore we simply chose that niche as the beginning of our journey into the large molecule space.
How does your ‘reverse engineering methodology’ create a more resilient supply chain?
‘Reverse engineering’ is our fundamental approach; using the expertise that our teams have acquired by developing many chemistries over the years, we start at the end and work our way back.
We ask ourselves about the critical path materials and activities as one develops a new chemistry, making sure that we do not get trapped in a corner where we are only using one raw material or one type of chemistry, and that we can navigate around the creation of fragile supply chains.
The second element is simpler; making sure that we have multiple sources, understanding our supply base very well, and nurturing strong relationships, thus eliminating as much supply risk as possible. We were very fortunate during the last two years in avoiding disruptions when we all heard so much about them, but that was also because we paid a lot of attention to having a robust set of suppliers. Finally, the other thing we are experiencing - which certainly benefits our position in the market - is that customers want more of their supply to be coming from Europe and the U.S. in order to protect it as much as possible. This fits right in with the type of capacities and capabilities that we are investing in, within both regions.
Can you tell us about the acquisition of Snapdragon Chemistry and the strategy behind this?
This is the second of two acquisitions this year. The first one was Q1 Scientific, a company that focuses on stability storage. Snapdragon, our second purchase, are specialists and world-renowned in their field, which is continuous flow manufacturing and solving very difficult chemistry problems with new molecules. Cambrex saw a tremendous fit between its legacy and Snapgragon’s capabilities. Furthermore, continuous flow manufacturing is, in my opinion, the most important developing field in small molecules, as it allows you to develop molecules that are very difficult to do in a batch process and has lower environmental impact, so we saw obvious benefits in joining with Snapdragon.
The API business for a CDMO is as competitive as it gets; how do you manage to keep an edge?
Our customers come to us as a CDMO because we have special capabilities and technologies, so it all starts with our scientists, our engineers and our manufacturing teams. Also, because we work with a variety of customers and molecules, we get a broader perspective on what it takes to be a great API manufacturer. Having a balance sheet where we are able to invest back organically into the business is also crucial. We announced US$100 million of capacity expansion just in the last two years, focusing on three or four of the key sites; so being able to continually invest in new tech and capacity expansion is certainly a benefit to our leadership position in the industry.
