Actavis Group announced today that it has acquired a manufacturing plant from Grandix Pharmaceuticals, a manufacturing and marketing company based in Chennai, Southern India for an undisclosed amount. In addition Actavis has just opened a new API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient) development unit, which allows Actavis to backward integrate its business.

 

Grandix provides Actavis with its own low cost manufacturing capability in India and a facility from which to develop and manufacture products for the US and key markets in Europe.  Actavis also intends to use the facility as a manufacturing site to develop and re-launch older products as many of these products need lower cost base to be competitive in the international marketplace.

 

Actavis intends to increase the manufacturing capacity of the plant to approximately 4 billion tablets over the next 18 months and strengthen the development and regulatory affairs units. 

 

The acquisition follows the Group's purchase of Lotus Laboratories, a Contract Research Organisation (CRO) based in Bangalore, in February 2005. Lotus has the capacity to complete over 160 bio-equivalence studies a year and the ability to reduce the Group's R&D expenditure.

 

Actavis has opened a new API development facility in India, with the aim of developing 10-15 products a year and the unit has already started development of the first ten. The new site is 1000 sqm and over 50 specialists have already been hired.

 

Founded in 1996, Grandix currently employs over 100 people in its manufacturing plant in Alathur, approximately 40km from Chennai in Southern India. Grandix owns and operates the facility, which manufactures a wide range of solid oral dosage formulations with a current production capacity of 700 million tablets per year. The first US ANDA for the plant was submitted in June 2006. The acquired plant will operate under the Actavis name and the Company will not acquire any other business from Grandix, which will continue its other activities.

 

"This is another exciting acquisition for Actavis and an important extension of our activities in India. The new facility will enable Actavis to further reduce its manufacturing costs and provide the support and expertise necessary to extend our growth into key European markets and the US. I believe this is an important step for Actavis that we now have a backward integration with a growing API development unit, in addition to one of the strongest CRO companies in India"