Recipharm, the Swedish contract development and manufacturing organisation, has recently established a dedicated taskforce to manage the transition of the UK exiting the European Union with minimal impact to its operations and customers.
Thomas Beck, senior VP of quality management at Recipharm, said: “While many stakeholders in the pharma industry are campaigning for a ‘soft’ exit from the EU, there is a risk that the complexity of the regulatory landscape will increase dramatically if a ‘hard’ Brexit takes place. Consequently, we are preparing for all eventualities.”
The formation of the ‘Brexit taskforce’ will see Recipharm prioritise its preparations and invest in the necessary capabilities and equipment within its UK and European facilities to ensure seamless operations post March 2019.
Recipharm serves more than 450 customers from development and manufacturing facilities in France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the US.
Beck continued: “Recipharm’s presence in both the UK and mainland Europe means we are well positioned to support our customers post-Brexit. We are also adept at streamlining processes across geographies and dealing with third party importations into Europe due to our global facilities.”
To strengthen its organisation ahead of Brexit, Recipharm has plans to recruit more staff into laboratory and regulatory roles to meet the additional analytical, release testing and administration requirements that are expected.
“Brexit has the potential to bring about additional resource demands. We also expect to see a greater demand for outsourced manufacturing services from UK-based marketing authorisation holders (MAHs) wishing to supply to Europe and are preparing our team to meet this demand,” said Beck.
He concluded that: “We firmly believe that the challenge needs to be faced in a pragmatic way and have been liaising with both the EMA and relevant politicians to communicate that the finer details of Brexit and the implications on our industry need to be discussed as a matter of priority.”
