The name CordenPharma is probably only known to a few people. But the Basel-based pharmaceutical company is heavily involved in the weight loss product business – a rapidly growing billion-dollar business.
CordenPharma produces the active ingredient GLP-1 and supplies companies that develop slimming products. The company currently employs 3000 people worldwide. Thanks to the boom, more are set to follow – including in Switzerland.
“We are planning to invest 900 million Swiss francs in our sites in the USA and Switzerland. 400 jobs will be created to meet the demand for the new medicines,” says Michael Quirmbach, CEO & President of CordenPharma. Over 200 new jobs are to be created in Switzerland alone, including in a new plant that is still under construction.
[Photo by SRF] CordenPharma’s laboratory in the Basel region (Liestal, Switzerland). CordenPharma wants to create over 200 new jobs in Switzerland and is planning a new plant.
Bachem, Ypsomed and Skan benefit
Another example: Bachem, based in Bubendorf. The Basel-based company has just built a new building – also for GLP-1 production – and is planning a new plant in Sisseln AG. Hundreds of jobs will also be created here.
Solothurn-based Ypsomed is also in big business. It produces injection pens for the Danish company Novo Nordisk, which sells fat-away syringes.
Or the Allschwil-based company Skan: the Basel-based supplier manufactures so-called isolators, which are used in production to fill medicines in a sterile manner – in this case, the fat-away syringes.
The Basel-based pharmaceutical company Roche now also wants to benefit from the boom. In December, the pharmaceutical giant bought a US company with three active ingredients for 2.7 billion dollars. Roche has high hopes: “If you look at the data, you can see that these drugs are clearly better than those currently in development or in patients,” explains CEO Thomas Schinecker. Like many analysts, he sees huge potential in weight loss drugs: “By 2035, around half of the global population will be overweight.”
130 billion dollar business
However, Roche is still a long way from approval for these active ingredients and analysts doubt that the Basel-based pharmaceutical company will be successful. The competition is huge and other companies are already much further ahead. Swiss suppliers such as Corden Pharma or Bachem, on the other hand, are likely to benefit from the business of the century for a long time – and thus also the Swiss economy.
“We expect this boom to continue for the next ten to 15 years. Analysts expect this market to be worth 130 billion dollars by 2030, making it one of the largest pharmaceutical markets in the world,” says CordenPharma CEO & President Michael Quirmbach.
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