Established in 1971, Contract Pharmacal Corp. (CPC) has been in operation for 48 years. How has the company and your service offering evolved during this time?

Contract Pharmacal Corp. (CPC) was built around being a full-service business, and as a CDMO we place emphasis on the development aspect of our operations. The fact that we are a one-stop-shop has set us apart in the market and has helped to significantly grow our business. Companies can come to us with anything from an idea to an early stage molecule, and we can take them from a very early stage, all the way through development and eventually commercialization, including aspects such as testing and packaging. We are involved in the method development work and analytically we have a tremendously talented team, which can develop methods on both the pharma and supplement side of the business.

Over the years, CPC has continued to add significant capacity in blending, tablet compression, encapsulation, coating and powder filling. As the company has grown and evolved, we have added capabilities such as milling, granulation, and drug coating on seeds. We continually help our partners innovate to stay a step ahead of their competition. With respect to packaging, we do a significant amount of bottling, blistering and powder filling. For one particular customer, we added eight packaging lines to do single dose sachets and stick packs, making CPC the largest OTC drug producer of single dose powders in the United States. We are also in the process of expanding our facilities, where we will more than double our capacity to 40 billion doses per year by the end of 2021.

Given the planned US$40 million expansion at CPC’s Hauppauge, NY site, what is your strategy for gaining greater market share?

CPC is exploring venturing into other opportunities that are close to the core of what we do today. There is so much potential in the industry, even in solid dose, as solid dose is still by far the most popular dosage form and will continue to be as it is an inexpensive way to deliver drug products to the market. Personalized medicine will become more commonplace over the next couple of decades, and we will see how solid dose can play a role in the personalized medicine area.

Are you investing into innovative drug delivery technologies?

CPC has been very thoughtful when acquiring innovative technology equipment, and we want to ensure that we are doing so with an eye towards efficiency. What is instrumental in controlling healthcare cost is optimal efficiency at the highest quality. We invest in technologies to optimize our operations and increase the efficiencies within our business, such as increasing batch sizes. We have just installed our second 400ft³ blender, which means we can manufacture batch sizes of 8000 kg, allowing us to spread the one-time costs of batch manufacturing over a greater number of doses. Our aim is to relentlessly drive out waste and non-value added activities to control costs, providing our partners with an improved cost structure to gain market share. Our partners’ success in turn helps CPC achieve its growth objectives.

What is the geographical spread of your client portfolio?

Historically, many of our clients are based in North America and Europe, and through their vast network our products are exported to many countries in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and South America. In 2018, CPC partnered with Kirk Humanitarian, which is an organization that is donating Prenatal Vitamins to healthcare providers in third world countries. Through our partner, we are working toward becoming the world’s leading low cost producer of the UNIMMAP formula, and through this alliance we anticipate our product will ultimately be approved for distribution in 75 countries. From a philanthropic perspective, this is an ideal project to be involved in. We are delighted to be involved in a project that can impact the health outcome for these pregnant mothers and their babies.  

Has CPC seen the serialization regulations mandated by the United States Drug Supply Chain Security Act (DSCSA) as a hindrance or an opportunity?

On the surface, the new serialization regulations might appear as a hindrance, but it is actually an opportunity. We have been considering how we can deploy that same technology on the consumer side – referring to over-the-counter products – of our business to help drive innovation. By printing a QR code on our nutritional products, for example, this could drive a consumer to a web page that provides detailed information about where their product has come from and what specific raw materials were used. We are trying to take something that is a requirement on the prescription side of the business and find a way to turn it into a competitive advantage on the OTC products.

What are CPC’s key objectives moving forward and what would be your final message to the industry?

CPC aims to continue finding companies that share our passion and enthusiasm to partner with. We want to help our partners innovate and bring their products to market quickly and make an impact by being fast and nimble.

Having industry-leading quality, service and products is a benchmark for companies like CPC that want to lead in the life sciences space. We have our operational mindset geared towards quality in every interaction that we have and to pervade everything we do. We will continually look at ways to improve and optimize our business to help our clients deliver the lowest cost, highest quality products to the market to ensure their success.