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JS: Companies are using M&A to broaden their offerings to customers, including expanding their services throughout the product lifecycle. This is because acquisition is a quicker way of obtaining entry into the market and has the additional bonus of gaining the required technical capabilities, personnel and other resources (equipment, manufacturing facility, R&D laboratories, etc.) immediately.

For example, if a company wants to expand into a new service area, it may choose to acquire rather than build in-house.

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SC: The most common drivers behind M&A activities are to expand capabilities, enable faster market entry or increase your geographical footprint. KR: What do you think are the key triggers for this M&A activity?

These acquisitions are integral to the company’s strategic focus and growth as it sets out to further expand its service offering into novel and advanced biological modalities.

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Recently, Recipharm announced a series of acquisitions in ATMPs (advanced therapy medicinal products), including GenIbet Biopharmaceuticals (Oeiras, Portugal), Arranta Bio (Watertown, MA, US) and Vibalogics (Boxborough, MA, US/Cuxhaven, Germany). These activities aren’t set to stop any time soon as companies seek new ways to compete for business in a highly active and growing market.” Many organisations are placing a strategic focus on synergising their services, integrating innovative technology, domestic and international geographical expansion, and growth into new areas of therapeutic modalities, among other drivers. “During the past 10 years, we’ve observed continuous M&A activity with varying degrees of size. “Consolidation in the CDMO segment of the industry has remained consistent with yearly activity,” says Joe Sinclair (JS), Vice President, Business Development and Corporate Strategy at Vibalogics, “and we can expect this to continue throughout 2022.” This is particularly noticeable in the production of traditional mAbs,” he adds. “The mergers of drug product (DP) facilities as well as drug substance (DS) facilities are often reported in the news however, organic growth is also on the rise, with many manufacturers investing in the expansion of their facilities and capabilities. 1 “This activity is particularly evident with new modalities and with strategies that are designed to quickly gain market entry, expand technical capabilities and obtain a relevant track record.” 'The top M&A trends in 2021 showcased significant investment in both biologics and cell and gene therapy manufacturing through large-scale acquisitions and/or expansions.” Industry trade group, DCAT, noted 15 major deals among the most prominent players in the industry in 2021. “Looking at the biologics contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) industry today,” observes Seokjin Chang (SC), Market Intelligence at Samsung Biologics, “mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are widespread and actively taking place.' Now, clients are beginning to look for a blend of these areas of expertise in a single service provider.” If we look at the kind of companies with expertise in those two areas, they have traditionally been very different.

The big thing at the moment is the convergence of engineering and IT. 'Then, there was the IT industry that focused on the ERP, logistics systems and supply chain … and then cloud started to be adopted. Joe Haugh (JH), Vice President of Life Sciences Manufacturing at Cognizant, comments: “Historically, there were engineering vendors who generally focused on production sites and all the engineering tools involved in manufacturing.' Given that there’s a lot of discussion about the consolidation of service providers throughout the pharmaceutical industry, I asked the panel how much of this activity they’re seeing in their own environments.

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