Sterling Pharma Solutions, a global contract development and manufacturing organisation, today announced that it had reached agreement with Novartis to acquire its Ringaskiddy campus (Novartis Ringaskiddy Limited), near Cork, Ireland. Financial details of the sale, which is expected to close in Q4, 2022, have not been disclosed.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sterling will acquire the 111-acre site, which includes three active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing buildings, as well as facilities to support development and scale up in line with Sterling’s core business focus. The site currently manufactures a number of APIs across a range of therapeutic areas, and the deal includes an ongoing supply agreement between Sterling and Novartis from the Ringaskiddy facility. Upon closing, the workforce will transition to Sterling.

Sterling’s Chief Executive Officer, Kevin Cook, said: “The addition of this new, world-class facility and its highly skilled workforce, with its history of quality and regulatory excellence, to Sterling’s portfolio, will enable us to provide expanded capacity to our customers. The site at Ringaskiddy has a number of synergies with our current global facilities enabling us to continue our growth strategy in the small molecule market, as well as extending our capabilities in several key technological areas such as peptide manufacturing and large-scale chromatography.”

This announcement follows several investments in Sterling’s manufacturing capabilities in 2021, as well as the acquisition of its Germantown site in Wisconsin from Alcami in 2020, and a dedicated antibody-drug conjugate facility in Deeside, UK in 2021.

The addition of the Ringaskiddy campus will see Sterling’s global network grow to five facilities across the UK, Europe and the US, with a workforce of over 1,000 employees.