Lever­ku­sen — The global WuXi Biolo­gics Group has acqui­red a sterile filling and freeze-drying plant from Bayer AG. The plant is desi­gned for the filling and freeze-drying of the blood coagu­lant Koval­try®. The plant is opera­ted on the Chem­park site in Lever­ku­sen. WuXi was advi­sed on this tran­sac­tion by a team led by Dirk W. Kolven­bach of Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek.

Under the asset purchase agree­ment signed in Janu­ary, WuXi Biolo­gics took over plant opera­ti­ons, purcha­sed plant equip­ment and signed a long-term cons­truc­tion lease. Equip­ped with a state-of-the-art filling line for phar­maceu­ti­cal products, the plant will offer sterile filling and freeze-drying of up to ten million vials per year.

“We are plea­sed to enter into this signi­fi­cant agree­ment with Bayer and to estab­lish our second site in Europe,” said Dr. Chris Chen, CEO of WuXi Biolo­gics. “With this new faci­lity in Germany, we can better serve our global custo­mers by imple­men­ting the unique manu­fac­tu­ring para­digm of ‘global dual sourcing’ through our robust and high-quality supply chain. We will conti­nue to enable our global part­ners to deve­lop and manu­fac­ture biolo­gics that bene­fit pati­ents worldwide.”

WuXi Biolo­gics is a leading global open access tech­no­logy plat­form for biolo­gics. The company provi­des end-to-end solu­ti­ons to help compa­nies disco­ver, deve­lop and manu­fac­ture biolo­gics from concept to commer­cial produc­tion. To support the fight against COVID-19, WuXi Biolo­gics has dona­ted more than 1,600 masks to medi­cal faci­li­ties in Lever­ku­sen, Germany.

Advi­sor to WuXi Biolo­gics: Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek
Dirk W. Kolven­bach, Photo (lead) Düssel­dorf, Michael Pauli, LL.M. (Corpo­rate), Colo­gne; Wolf­ram Meven, Jörn Matu­szew­ski (both Tax), Dr. Rainer Velte (Anti­trust), Düssel­dorf; Fabian Gerst­ner, LL.M., Bettina Nehe­i­der (both Cons­truc­tion Law), both Munich; Chris­toph Nöhles, LL.M., Mathis Dick, LL.M. (both Real Estate), both Düsseldorf
Dr. Bodo Dehne (Invest­ment Control), Dr. Tobias Plath, LL.M. (Insu­rance Law), Tors­ten Groß, LL.M. (Labor Law), Sarah Radon, LL.M. (Commer­cial)

Advi­sors to Bayer: Rede­ker Sell­ner Dahs
Dr. Markus Dierks­meier (Corpo­rate), Bartho­lo­mäus Aengen­vo­ort, Alex­an­der Leidig (both Real Estate), all Bonn