SP Industries expands global presence with Spanish i-Dositecno acquisition

By Sophie Bullimore | Published: 29-Oct-2019

The US-based fill-finish specialist's acquisition of the sterile filling lines provider is the next step following a partnership earlier in the year

US-based SP Industries, a designer and manufacturer of lab equipment, pharmaceutical fill-finish manufacturing solutions, lab supplies and glassware, has acquired the assets of privately held i-Dositecno.  Located in Mataro, Spain, i-Dositecno is a global provider of complete sterile filling lines for pharmaceutical, cosmetic and ophthalmic applications.

The two companies worked together in August to synergise fill-finish technologies, paving the way for the acquisition.

We reached out to SP Industries and Ian Whitehall, CMO, said about the partnership turned acquisition: "Since the announcement in the summer, the benefits to the SP Scientific-iDositecno partnership have been demonstrated by a significantly increased SP Scientific fill-finish order book. The iDosi equipment now enables SP Scientific to deliver a complete fill-finish solution from one single provider and with the aggressive delivery timescales needed to meet the “faster to market” demands of todays’ pharmaceutical manufacturing sector. SP Scientific has proved the success of the partnership very quickly and the acquisition now deepens and solidifies the relationship."

Whitehall also told CT that no financial terms have been disclosed.

Innovative servicing and support

"I-Dositecno has a well-earned reputation for producing high quality, fill-finish equipment complemented by strong software engineering capabilities and innovative servicing and support," said SP CEO Brian Larkin. "At SP we are continually focused on bringing value to our customer relationships and i-Dositecno's current portfolio, engineering expertise and broad capabilities in liquid filling particularly for syringes and other cartridges in addition to vials, are a very strategic complement to our Hull and VirTis freeze dryers and PennTech aseptic vial processing lines."

Larkin explained that as biological drug development and treatment protocols have become more specialised, short-run aseptic liquid filling are expected to continue to drive pharmaceutical growth.

The CEO added: "With the addition of i-Dositecno to our SP brand, we now join a very select group of manufacturers with the capability to provide full lines. And, while SP has traditionally had a stronger equipment footprint in the US, i-Dositecno's efforts and success have primarily been within Europe and Asia. These relationships, as well as the addition of a Spain location to our current UK manufacturing within Europe, provide significant opportunity to better serve the worldwide market."

Key manufacturing, engineering, sales and service personnel from i-Dositecno have joined the SP team to assure continuity in operations and service. Oriol Casoliva, founder and past CEO of i-Dositecno will also join SP's Executive Leadership Team.

"We look forward to benefiting from [Casoliva's] vision and depth of knowledge in maximising i-Dositecno and SP's performance within the aseptic pharmaceutical manufacturing space," Larkin concluded.

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