The Deals Shaping Milan, and How to Make Your Meetings Count

This article topic was voted on by the public on LinkedIn. The vote for this issue came out a tie. Half of you wanted the deals worth watching at CPHI Milan, half wanted help making the meetings count, so you're getting both. Deals first, then what to do with them on the floor at Fiera Milano. We'll be there too so be sure to scroll to the bottom to see how you can meet up with us.

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Five moves worth knowing before you go

Samsung Biologics and PolyPeptide

Samsung Biologics offered CHF 1.46 billion (about $1.8 billion) in cash for PolyPeptide Group in July and expects to close by the end of the year. The deal takes Samsung beyond antibodies and ADCs into peptides, and it spreads a network that has sat mostly in South Korea across sites in Sweden, Belgium, France, the US and India. Samsung also bought a former GSK 60,000-litre plant in Rockville, Maryland in March, its first in the US.

Looking to work with them? Remember that a deal that hasn't closed stalls some decisions and rushes others. Anyone you meet from either business is working out what the combined footprint looks like, and quality, regulatory and tech transfer teams feel that first.

Lonza selling Capsules & Health Ingredients

Lonza is selling CHI to Lone Star Funds for CHF 2.3 billion, keeping a 40% stake, and expects to close in the second half of this year. It says the money goes into growth and smaller acquisitions, and that it'll run as a pure-play CDMO. Its CHF 500 million fill-finish plant at Stein opens in the second half of 2027.

Something to think about is that a carve-out this size needs its own finance, quality and HR teams from the day it closes. Companies that say they plan to buy tend to hire the people who'll do the buying and the integrating first.

Charles River out of CDMO

GI Partners bought Charles River Laboratories's CDMO and cell solutions businesses in May and named the new company Rose BioSolutions. Charles River also sold European discovery assets to IQVIA for about $145 million.

A business that used to be a division needs commercial leadership and a P&L of its own. That takes a year to build, often longer.

Consolidation in drug substance

Siegfried has bought three drug-substance sites from SK Capital Partners this year: Noramco™ in Wilmington, Delaware, Purisys - now part of the Siegfried Group in Athens, Georgia, and Extractas Bioscience in Tasmania. Corden Pharma - A Full-Service CDMO bought AmbioPharm - A Global Peptide CDMO and with it peptide plants in South Carolina and Shanghai. Bachem is spending more than CHF 500 million on a new peptide plant at Sisslerfeld.

What does this mean for hiring? Peptides are pulling money through the whole chain. Integrating several sites at once lands on operations and quality leadership first.

The fill-finish build-out

Most of the capital is going into sterile and aseptic capacity. Vetter Pharma has started building in Saarland, with about EUR 480 million in the first phase. PCI Pharma Services is spending $1 billion across its US and European sites. ROIS has bought Bristol Myers Squibb's injectable plant in Phoenix. Closer to Milan, BSP Pharmaceuticals S.p.A. in Latina brings two more conjugation lines and a contained drug-product line online by the end of this year.

Keep in mind: a capacity announcement is a hiring announcement with a lag. A line that runs in 2028 needs a qualified team long before then.

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Making the meetings count

CPHI expects about 62,000 people and more than 2,900 exhibitors over three days at Fiera Milano. Here's a few tips to make sure you make the most of your time there:

1. Book before you land. The people worth seeing will have full diaries by the end of September. One booked meeting beats five you fall into.
2. Lead with the specific thing. Nobody answers "we're both at CPHI, shall we meet". They do answer a message that names what their business just did and why you want to talk about it. The list above covers twenty or so companies.
3. Ask what the stand script doesn't cover. Which site takes the work after the integration. Who signs off now. What they've pushed into next year. Ten minutes of that teaches you more than an hour of capability slides.
4. Agree the next step before you walk away. A date in the diary, or something to send and a name to send it to. Cards with no next step become a pile you can't sort on the flight home.
5. Follow up while the show is still running. By the Monday after, everyone's back at a desk with 400 emails.
6. Notice who seems unsettled. A change of ownership means a change throughout the entire business, see where your expertise can help.

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Finding us in Milan

Jack Shute, Harry Kennedy and Isabel Kennedy are at CPHI for all three days. If you're hiring into a site that's scaling, or you want a read on what people are paid to do this work, message them directly to set something up.