Why Your Biotech Contract Manufacturer is Expanding in Combination Product and Drug-Fill/Finish in 2024
Letter to Our Colleagues, from Founder/CEO Wayne Woodard, Argonaut Manufacturing Services
As 2024 gets underway, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on 2023 and to share some insights into the likely direction contract manufacturing services in the biotech and diagnostic industries are headed.
We believe there is a strong future ahead of those companies working on Combination Products and we have bolstered our ability to support these complicated projects.
Last year saw the hangover of COVID depressing growth, higher interest rates, and inflation strongly impact our sector. This resulted in a number of restructuring and downsizing events, and also coincided with constriction of the capital markets, hitting both large and small biotech and diagnostic companies. On the plus side, the inventory and supply chain snarls caused by COVID have largely subsided. For organizations that had planned for investment, 2023 became a time to gain talent and/or acquire new technologies at relatively low prices. At the same time, others chose to enact cuts and retrench.
At Argonaut we recognize that now is the time to expand, and we are particularly excited about several significant opportunities for growth in 2024 and beyond.
Contract manufacturing is reliant on a continuous flow of client-sponsored project work and is therefore not immune from the industry macro-economics. Like the innovators that contract manufacturers support, capital is required for manufacturers to expand capabilities, adopt state of the art technologies, and grow a talented workforce. Some biotech contract manufacturers have decided to retrench and reevaluate growth opportunities when the markets have rebounded.
Unlike them, at Argonaut we recognize that now is the time to expand, and we are particularly excited about several significant opportunities for growth in 2024 and beyond.
- We believe there is a strong future ahead of those companies working on Combination Products and we have bolstered our ability to support these complicated projects. While the regulatory environment is complex, the manufacturing of Combination Products brings together two of Argonaut’s core competencies – Drug Product Manufacturing and the fill/finish/packaging expertise of Life Science & Diagnostic Manufacturing. We are already actively engaged in enabling our partners to develop and bring to market new combination products, such as Biora Therapeutics, who recently received the first IND clearance for an ingestible drug-and-device combination from the FDA and initiated a phase 1 clinical trial for their NaviCap platform.
While the regulatory environment is complex, the manufacturing of Combination Products brings together two of Argonaut’s core competencies.
- We are continuing to make progress on our previously announced plan to significantly increasing our Drug Product Fill/Finish capacity and capabilities. There are long lead times associated with the manufacture and qualification of fill/finish equipment and we started this project in 2022 by acquiring the required footprint and ordering state of the art isolator-based filling equipment. Our Drug Product Fill/Finish capacity will more than double, while adding syringe and cartridge filling capability to our service offering.
We are continuing to make progress on our previously announced plan to significantly increasing our Drug Product Fill/Finish capacity and capabilities.
At Argonaut, we see 2024 as full of possibilities. We stand ready to help your team from Drug Development to Life Science Diagnostics, and Lyophilization to Combination Products. My team and I look forward to working together with you and please contact us for any questions you have on how we can help you.
Sincerely,
Wayne Woodard
CEO, Argonaut Manufacturing Services
