Eurofins says CDMO bookings are ‘robust’ for 2025, leverages investments in Canada
Lab testing services giant Eurofins Scientific, headquartered in Luxembourg with more than 900 laboratories in over 60 countries, sees a bright future for its contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business.
The company says it is poised to benefit from investments made over the last few years in Eurofins CDMO Alphora, based in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. On Jan. 30, Eurofins announced that bookings for 2025 are “robust” in the CDMO segment, reflecting increased activity compared to the last couple of years.
Eurofins CDMO Alphora, part of Eurofins CDMO, provides active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and drug product development services to pharma and biotech customers for complex, niche, small molecule programs from preclinical to Phase III and commercial manufacturing.
“CDMO Canada is benefiting from large investments carried out over the last five years and showed double-digit growth and strong profitability in 2024,” according to Eurofins. “Growth was strong in H2 2024 as Eurofins CDMO Alphora’s new 2,000L scale plant came fully online.”
In July 2024, Eurofins CDMO Alphora announced the expansion of its API capacity and capabilities with the completion of a new manufacturing facility at its Mississauga site, which added 15,000 square feet of GMP processing and warehouse space.
“The addition of 2 x 2000L reactors expands existing GMP plant capacity and supports API batches to the 125kg scale,” according to the company. “The facility is designed to handle up to Safebridge Class 3 compounds and includes two Hastelloy filter dryers to facilitate API isolation and drying. The reactor systems can support temperatures from cryogenic (-800C) to 2000C, as well as hydrogenations and biotage chromatography.”
Geoff Evans, president of Eurofins CDMO Alphora, told Pharma Manufacturing the company has “a number” of initiatives underway including bolstering its biologics development capabilities, which are focused on monoclonal antibodies (mAbs).
Evans noted that mAbs are the “more established market but it fits very nicely with our existing business, and I’m very pleased with the synergies we’re seeing from it.”
Last year, the CDMO announced the successful completion of a 3,300-square-foot, pilot-scale biologics development facility for mAbs and other mammalian-based therapeutic proteins. The facility’s offerings include upstream and downstream development, process design, analytical development, GMP QC testing, GMP cell-based assays, and scale-up capacity to 200L.
Max London, a business development executive focused on biologics at Eurofins CDMO Alphora, told the OBIO Investment Summit in Toronto last week that the company’s scale-up capacity to 200L can support Phase I or Phase II clinical trials.
In 2024, Eurofins CDMO Alphora also expanded its Drug Product Analytical Services Laboratory in Mississauga, increasing its footprint three-fold with specialized equipment and analytical techniques. The lab was expanded to “encompass water activity measurements, intrinsic dissolution studies, additional glove box systems, an added suite of HPLCs, new stability chambers and gas chromatography,” according to the company.
Waiting for return on investment
Eurofins CEO Gilles Martin told analysts and investors on a conference call late last month that the company is “continuing to invest but we are getting close now to being done with this investment phase and delivering.”
Based on full-year financial results, Martin said Eurofins had a “good year” in 2024 with “strong” financial results. At the same time, he said the company is “still in the middle of a building phase” with a lot of the investment made over the last five years not yet yielding “beneficial” impact.
“It takes a long time to build a building, to validate it for biopharma or CDMO,” Martin said, who added that Eurofins has “lots” of capital expenditures (CAPEX) that are either being “underutilized or not utilized at all” which is “weighing” on the company’s cash flow and returns. However, he contends that the CAPEX will ultimately provide Eurofins with a return on its investments.
Investments and tariffs
The investment continues at Eurofins CDMO Alphora, which is building a new 50,000-square-foot GMP biologics manufacturing facility — with funding from the government of Canada — to manufacture mAbs and protein therapies for clinical and commercial applications.
“The facility will be equipped to the 2000L bioreactor scale, employ single-use technology, and be capable of running both fed-batch and perfusion modes,” according to the company. “It will provide a fully integrated offering with a state-of-the-art sterile fill line with a capacity of up to 24.9M units annually.”
Evans said that the new large-scale, biologics manufacturing facility is part of the CDMO’s integrated offering. Eurofins CDMO Alphora expects the new facility to be operational by April 2026, which will be “dedicated to clinical and commercial applications to bolster biomanufacturing capabilities and preparedness for future pandemics.”
Eurofins’ investment in its Canadian CDMO comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has — for now — suspended a 25% tariff on imports from Canada. However, the looming threat of a trade war is weighing on relations between the two countries.
Evans said that he is not “overly concerned” about the potential impact of new tariffs on Canadian products.
“There are always these disruptions that occur but if you look at the arc of time and relationships, I think this will sort itself out,” Evans said. “I think we’ll be fine.”
Still, Evans warned that U.S. tariffs on Canada could create “a bit of short-term uncertainty, which is never great, but there’s a natural rhythm to the North American market that is robust and has been in place for decades.”
