Codis has completed its acquisition of Catalent's Nottingham, UK facility, adding oral solid dose development and small-scale commercial manufacturing that gives pharmaceutical and consumer health customers a single-source route from early development through to commercial spray-dried intermediates and finished dose forms.

The move combines Nottingham's development-scale spray drying, formulation, analytical and clinical supply capabilities with Codis' expanding commercial-scale operations in Haverhill, where a new GEA Pharma-SD PSD-4 commercial spray dryer is scheduled for validation in 2027, building on more than two decades of formulation and clinical supply expertise at the Nottingham site.

Codis is a global CDMO headquartered in the United States, specialising in commercial spray drying, amorphous solid dispersions and particle engineering, with more than 400,000 sq ft of cGMP manufacturing space across St. Louis, Missouri, Seymour, Indiana, and Nottingham and Haverhill, UK, and combined output of more than 5,000 metric tons of spray-dried product annually and more than 300 employees worldwide.

Nicolas Fortin, CEO of Codis, said the acquisition was an exciting milestone for Codis and that the Nottingham team's scientific strength and development track record make them a valuable addition, giving customers a more integrated path from development to commercial manufacturing.

The facility was previously operated by Catalent, a global contract development and manufacturing organisation serving pharmaceutical and biotech customers.

The acquisition reflects continued bolt-on consolidation among CDMOs building integrated development-to-commercial pathways for poorly soluble molecules, rather than each site operating as a standalone service.

The timing reflects structural demand for spray drying capacity, with the pharmaceutical spray drying market projected to grow from $2.20 billion in 2025 to $3.32 billion by 2031, as roughly 40 per cent of pipeline molecules present low aqueous solubility requiring this technology.

For sponsors, having development-scale and commercial-scale spray drying under one quality system reduces technology transfer risk when moving a molecule from clinical supply into commercial production.

The wider signal for UK pharmaceutical manufacturing is that US-headquartered CDMOs continue to invest in British sites as bioavailability-enhancement capacity becomes a competitive differentiator in winning complex, poorly soluble drug programmes. It also underscores continued private investment into UK contract manufacturing infrastructure even as broader life sciences capital remains selective.

Source: BioSpace / GII Research