 |
|
Marcelo Morales, CEO of HollisterStier, is ramping up |
A plaque outside HollisterStier Laboratories LLC’s year-old
office addition in northeast Spokane holds a message from India.
“Jubilant Organosys Ltd. dedicates these facilities to the
employees of Hollister-Stier,” the plaque reads. “May we continue to grow and
flourish together.” The names of Shyam and Hari Bhartia, co-chairmen of
India-based pharmaceutical giant Jubilant Organosys, are etched below it.
Since acquiring HollisterStier for $122.5 million during the
summer of 2007, Jubilant has dedicated much more than a building to the
88-year-old Spokane pharmaceutical-manufacturing plant; the Indian company has
poured money and resources into the operation as part of its broader strategy
to gain a strong foothold in the North American pharmaceutical market.
The parent company has invested a total of about $40 million
in new equipment and the new building addition at the Spokane facility during
the past two years, says HollisterStier CEO Marcelo Morales, a biochemist who
was born in Chile, grew up in California and spent most of his career in
Toronto before moving to Spokane last October. HollisterStier has added about
50 people to its workforce in the past year and now has 541 employees.
“The fundamentals in Spokane remain the same,” Morales says.
“Clearly, our mandate is to continue to grow contract manufacturing.”
Contract manufacturing is one of three primary business
units for HollisterStier and one the company expects will drive its future
growth. Much of the equipment investment in recent years has involved
positioning HollisterStier as one of North America’s most significant
facilities for sterile-injectable production.
For example, the company has bolstered its capabilities in
the area of lyophilization, which involves freeze-drying pharmaceuticals. With
the addition of two large freeze-drying units recently, the company doubled its
freeze-drying capacity and established itself as one of the larger lyophilizers
in the United States, Morales says.
“That scale gives us tremendous opportunity for our
clients,” he adds.
HollisterStier typically doesn’t disclose the names of
companies for which it provides contract manufacturing services, but the firm
has said its clients include a handful of the world’s largest drug makers.
The Spokane operation’s other business units include
allergy-treatment products and project-management services. Morales describes
all three units—contract manufacturing, allergy and project-management
services—as “businesses that in themselves are profitable.”
Jubilant’s acquisition of HollisterStier marked its first
significant step into the North American market, but the Indian conglomerate
bolstered its presence further when it acquired Montreal-based Draxis Specialty
Pharmaceuticals Inc. in May 2008 for $253 million. Draxis is similar to
HollisterStier in that it provides contract manufacturing and has its own
specialty products. At Draxis, the specialty products are in the field of
radiopharmaceuticals, which involves making radioactive drugs and lyophilized
non-radioactive drugs used in imaging centers, hospitals and other medical
facilities.
In addition to serving as CEO of HollisterStier, Morales
oversees Jubilant’s North American contract manufacturing and is charged with
increasing that part of the company’s business. In the fiscal year that ended
March 31, revenue from North American contract manufacturing grew by 40 percent
compared with the previous fiscal year, Morales says. For the current fiscal
year, the company expects double-digit increases in contract manufacturing
activity, as well as strong year-on-year growth in the allergy business.
Moving forward, Morales says, “We have very aspiring goals
of a continued growth pattern.”