The Catalan pharmacist Reig Jofre plans to promote a new biological products plant. The experience of your Sant Joan Despí freeze-dried factoryin which he invested 40 million euros and which allowed him to face the pandemic and produce the Janssen’s vaccine, has served to encourage the management of this listed family business to diversify its future activity. Now it is considering investing in an industrial facility with an international vocation in some area close to the current plant, but this time dedicated to offering a complete vertical solution for the production of biological products. The idea is that the new facility will be the appropriate industrial tool of other companies for the mass production of new sophisticated biological drugsthat is, those obtained from microorganisms, blood or other tissues. King Jofre it would be able to bring to industrial production those medicines or solutions developed in the future by pharmaceutical companies or specialized R&D firms. It could offer medicines, for example, based on proteins, recombinant cytokines or antibodies. And even the new generation of vaccines that do not require deep freezing.
King Jofre closed 2021 with a net profit of 5.1 million euros, compared to the 5.6 million euros achieved in 2020. It ended the year with sales of 236 million euros, 3% above the previous year and a ebitda of 27.3 million (also 3% more). Investments reached 11.5 million euros in 2021. King Jofre obtains 55% of revenues in international markets, which as a whole have grown by 4%, thus contributing the bulk of growth in 2021. In the last quarter of 2021, the first signs of recovery in demand for antibiotics can be seen, as a result of the progressive disappearance of distancing measures, which favors the growth of conditions that require these medications.
Although the expectations placed on the anticovid vaccine of Johnson & Johnson have not been 100% fulfilled, the CEO of Reig Jofre, Ignasi Biosca, is pleased to have carried out the projected plant in Sant Joan Despí, with which the firm has a flexible and sophisticated industrial facility capable of adapting to the future needs of the company. “The facility could have produced any vaccine, not just Janssen, it is designed for the production of essential medicines in general,” defends Biosca. The production reserve of the plant agreed with Janssen in the end has not been so limiting and the infrastructure has also been used for other clients. Now they are looking for new uses, customers and applications.
For your new industrial project in mind of biological products, Biosca assures that it is only necessary “not to put sticks in the wheels”, and that European funds would be welcome but that with the current capacity to generate resources it is possible to face the investment. Annual investments could reach 17 million and the capacity to generate resources is capable of supporting the investment, not yet calculated. He acknowledges that the current inflationary context does not make things easy for industrial investments, but in Reig Jofre the prevailing view is that in a future of global pandemics Pharmaceutical facilities need to be close to the population they serve. Producing sophisticated antibiotics or lyophilisates in close proximity is essential, as the current covid-19 pandemic has shown.
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Reig Jofre registered a debt of 69 million euros in 2021, reflecting the greater indebtedness associated with industrial investments and business acquisitions and a greater impact of exchange rates. The financial result for the year reflects, as in 2020, the impact of the revaluation of the cost of the purchase of the osteoarticular business, which represents an additional liability of two million euros. Specialty Pharmacare and Consumer Healthcare will continue to reinforce their growth strategies with special emphasis on the group’s international expansion.
Reig Jofre made available to Janssen and in record time a maximum production capacity of 3.3 million freeze-dried vials per month, about 40 million per year. 120 workers came to work at the plant in the middle of the pandemic. Currently, the plant employs a hundred workers and negotiates new contracts, without the initially offered 80% production reserve having become a reality. “Now we have to rewrite the plan for the future,” acknowledges Biosca. And in that rewriting appears the idea of a new industrial facility for biological products.