PCI grows beyond contract packaging, acquires UK's Penn Pharma

Packaging Coordinators, Inc. (Philadelphia), which started with the contract packaging operations of Cardinal Health and then picked up the same from AmerisourceBergen just over a year ago, has now added Penn Pharma (Tredegar, Wales) to its portfolio. While PCI’s core business is mostly commercial contract packaging (it recently began adding capabilities for clinical trial product supply and services), Penn Pharma brings both drug development and clinical trial services to the mix. If the company hasn’t become a full-blown contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) already, it’s certainly headed in that direction.

Penn Pharma, privately owned and employing about 300, has 30 years of experience in providing integrated drug development, clinical trial supply and manufacturing services to international clients. It opened a purpose-built contained manufacturing facility for high-potency, specialist containment solutions for the development and manufacturing of solid oral dose products. This year it launched a capacity expansion project for largescale commercial manufacturing and packaging.

PCI’s owner is Frazier Healthcare, a private equity company broadly invested in healthcare and pharma services, including some startup biotech firms. In April, Bill Mitchell, CEO of PCI, told Pharmaceutical Commerce that “Packaging and global distribution for investigational products is an area of focus for the PCI business as we look to provide a true clinical-to-commercial continuum for our customers, from very early Phase I through the commercial launch and then ongoing packaging support.”