Just over three months into his new role as the CEO of Recipharm, Greg Behar is already making sizable changes to the CDMO’s engine.
“I’ve been studying the company deeply before joining so that we could move fast and furious on the first of January, and that’s what we’ve been doing,” Behar told Endpoints News in an interview.
According to the CEO, the company’s recent moves reflect its efforts to simplify its portfolio. A few weeks ago, Recipharm divested seven manufacturing sites that will become a new, yet-to-be-named CDMO under Blue Wolf Capital Partners. In November, Recipharm said it would spin out its inhaler business to become a separate company altogether.
“This was a response to our internal complexity. As we had a very wide portfolio of small and large manufacturing capacity, it’s difficult to achieve the focus that you need to create momentum,” Behar explained.
Since it doesn’t manufacture GLP-1s yet, Recipharm is now considering how it can help ease production bottlenecks. Behar said the company has a “ready-to-roll site” in Wasserburg, Germany, with inspections to be completed in two months, that could be used for GLP-1s. “We’re pretty confident that this will add really attractive capacity,” he said. The site is designed for pre-filled syringes and is anticipated to be online in the third quarter this year.
Over the next six months, the CDMO will be building up its biologics capabilities, Behar said. Recipharm currently has biologics capabilities in the US, Germany and Portugal.
Recipharm will also be scaling up its RNA manufacturing. It is partnered with MIT to find ways to accelerate mRNA manufacturing. The CDMO is planning to launch a version of a new platform by the end of the year, Behar added. Although many RNA candidates are still in the early stages of R&D, scaling them up will be a challenge once they are approved, so Recipharm is looking ahead to potentially address obstacles, he said.
All this company maneuvering is by design, with Recipharm not immune to the commercial headwinds the wider manufacturing industry has faced last year. Its former CEO, Marc Funk, even said that this year is likely to be as challenging as 2023. And this is on top of geopolitical issues and drug shortages currently enveloping the biopharma industry.
Behar said the Biosecure Act could be a potential win for Europe-based CDMOs like Recipharm. “European-based players are pretty well-placed. We’re not in the middle of the fight [that is] on both sides of the world,” he said.
And in the wake of the Novo-Catalent deal, Recipharm, along with other CDMOs, is weighing its opportunities. “Customers are thinking twice … those who are [Catalent’s customers] will see some of their volumes go away. So we want to be there,” Behar said. “Will it happen overnight? No. We’re realistic that things will take time.”