2023 to 2024: An Era of Transformation, Strategic Investment, and Accelerated Growth

Even with the first quarter already complete, I wish everyone a good start to 2024! Personally, since this year marks my 10th anniversary at CordenPharma, I am taking some time to reflect on our CDMO journey over the last decade, and how grateful I feel to be working with such enthusiastic, dedicated and committed teams across Europe and the US. Spanning from Operations, Compliance and Project Management to Marketing & Sales, it is evident that our collective pride in working together to achieve such incredible accomplishments at CordenPharma is all driven by our daily mission to be your trusted CDMO partner in supporting you with high-quality products for the well-being of your patients.

Looking back over the last 12 months, 2023 was a transformational year for CordenPharma, which in many ways laid the foundation for the Group’s accelerated growth trajectory. Most notably, we contributed to the launch of several new medicines for small to large patient populations ranging from innovative Orphan Drugs with high unmet medical needs, to new Antibiotics, as well as breakthrough Diabetes and Obesity products. Throughout these projects, our purpose as a leading CDMO remained meaningful and brought important value across the pharmaceutical supply chain.

With strong scientific expertise, supported by our newly created Technology & Science Advisory Board and various partnerships, we continued to provide customers high-value, end-to-end services with a strategic focus on Peptides, Oligonucleotides, customized Lipid Excipients, Lipid NanoParticles (LNPs), sterile Injectables, and the extensive supply of Small Molecules (both Highly Potent and Regular Potency). These efforts resulted in an overall robust 2023 financial performance for the Group at €900 M, in line with the previous year, despite declining lower demand for COVID-related Lipids.

We were especially pleased to demonstrate our strong financial commitment in 2023 to invest ~20% of Net Sales towards expanding our development and manufacturing footprint across the globe by initiating, progressing or completing strategic investments across various technology platforms such as Peptide manufacturing, both for small scale in our Peptide Centre of Excellence in Frankfurt, DE, and for increased large scale SPPS production at CordenPharma Colorado (US). Additionally, we completed expansion of our state-of-the-art GMP LNP manufacturing facility at CordenPharma Caponago (IT), Lipid and Small Molecule capacity expansion including our environmentally-friendly large Supercritical Fluid Chromatography (SFC) capability in CordenPharma Chenôve, and expansion of our Oral Solid Dosage manufacturing capabilities for both normal potency (in CordenPharma Lisbon, PT) and Highly Potent & Oncology (in CordenPharma Plankstadt, DE), accompanied by the inauguration of new Bioavailability Enhancement technology in our Drug Product Innovation Centre of Excellence in Plankstadt, DE.

At the same time our global Program Management organization completed the implementation and roll-out of a digital project management toolkit with a new harmonized and tailored customer-centric interface across our Group, which now provides customers with faster and more transparent online and real-time status updates for their projects. We have already received great feedback from existing customers and are always eager to hear from you with any further suggestions or ideas to make your life easier and our collaboration as efficient as possible. As your trusted partner, we strive for continuous improvement to provide the best and most reliable service.

In 2024, we will continue to pursue our ambitious growth as part of a long-term strategic objective by striving for exceptional customer experience and strong commitments towards ESG, with a plan to announce our SBTi targets in the third quarter of 2024. Furthermore, we will continue to enhance our vibrant and encouraging employee working culture through our People Strategy. Our people make the difference for your projects today and in the future!

Thank you again for being a loyal and valued customer in 2023, and we look forward to meeting existing and new customers in 2024 at the upcoming LNP Formulation & Process Development Summit, April 29 – May 2 in Boston, CPHI North America, May 7 – 9 in Philadelphia, and Tides US, May 14 – 17 in Boston – or at any of our planned trade shows – to discuss your ongoing project needs.

To conclude, feel free to reach out to your respective Key Account Managers to schedule a meeting or provide any feedback on how we can better serve you – with the ultimate goal of being your long-term partner! We look forward to a successful 2024!