The Swedish contract development and manufacturing organisation Recipharm has signed an agreement to acquire  Milan based Corvette Pharmaceutical Services Group for  SEK 1.1 billion.

The sellers of Corvette Group are LBO Italia Investimenti Srl (“LBO Italia”), as controlling shareholder, and some private investors, holding minority interests. Corvette Pharmaceutical Services Group (consisting of Corvette Group SpA and LIO Immobiliare s.r.l.) has three manufacturing facilities located in the Milan region of Northern Italy. Each facility specialises in a different technology and business area. Masate is a sterile injectable manufacturing facility with capabilities for lyophilisation and liquid filling of vials and ampoules including hormones supplied to various territories including Japan. Paderno Dugnano is an API and finished dose form development and manufacturing facility with a number of owned product rights including Erdosteine, a mucolytic product. Lainate is focused on bulk lyophilisation of sterile beta lactam antibiotics.

“The acquisition of Corvette is very much in line with our strategic plan and we are very excited to have secured such a high quality company. We will be gaining access to a first class and largely new customer base as well as new capabilities and capacities that will add to our technology base. Italy is an extremely interesting market made up of many small and mid-size companies where Recipharm currently has little presence. This combined with the significant sales in emerging markets represents an exciting opportunity. We are therefore looking forward to combining the assets of both organisations and working together with the management of Corvette to deliver
benefit to all of our stakeholders,” says Thomas Eldered, CEO at Recipharm.

The equity consideration, estimated to EUR 100 million, is to be paid 50% in cash and 50% in the form of a senior unsecured convertible bond issued to the sellers. The closing of the transaction is expected to be 1st October 2014.