Aspen Moves Production to New $79 Million South Africa Plant

(Bloomberg) -- Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. is relocating the production of drugs for late-stage cancer, Parkinson’s disease and some auto-immune illnesses to South Africa from regions including Europe.

The move will help secure supply as manufacturing of the pharmaceuticals is currently outsourced to other companies, Chief Executive Officer Stephen Saad told reporters Monday in Port Elizabeth, where the 1 billion rand ($80 million) unit has been built. Aspen is Africa’s biggest drugmaker with operations in more than 150 countries and is valued at about 121 billion rand.

The new plant will start making drugs next month and is expected to produce about 3.6 billion pills a year at full capacity. About 90 percent of those will be exported, and both South African and German regulators have audited and approved the high-containment factory.

Aspen will add 500 jobs as part of the expansion, bringing its total employed in the coastal city to 2,500 people, Saad told reporters. That will make the Durban-based drugmaker the second-biggest employer in Port Elizabeth after German carmaker Volkswagen AG.

The company plans to build a separate factory in the city that will produce anesthetics and anti-coagulants that will be completed over the next three to four years, the CEO said. That’s expected to cost at least 2 billion rand.

The share closed 1.3 percent lower in Johannesburg Monday at 264.52 rand.

To contact the reporter on this story: Janice Kew in Johannesburg at jkew4@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Eric Pfanner at epfanner1@bloomberg.net, John Bowker, Vernon Wessels

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.