Can you share the main updates and achievements from Adare in recent months?

Last year, Adare was one of the few CDMOs that experienced both top-line and bottom-line double-digit growth. We’ve seen that this growth was primarily due to our strategy of pursuing continual significant investments in new equipment and capabilities across our global network.

We are continuing to expand our existing high-potency capabilities across our network of sites. This enables us to serve a wider market by addressing high-potency requirements at various stages of the manufacturing process and across different scales. For example, we’ll soon be offering commercial scale encapsulation, granulation, and packaging, in addition to our current milling, blending, and tablet compression capabilities. We are also seeing promising growth in our newer offerings and capabilities, especially in controlled substances. As part of our investment strategy, we've built a new Schedule II Vault in Philadelphia capable of storing up to 72 pallets of controlled substance material.

Our development pipeline is full of new opportunities. We are experiencing growth across numerous development areas, from supporting pediatric products to addressing challenges like nitrosamine mitigation, reformulation, and solubility issues. We have had record proposal volume in Q1 and we’re seeing significant new opportunities.

What are the specific areas driving growth for Adare?

Pediatrics continues to be a growing portion of both our business and the market at large. There are numerous interesting challenges to overcome in developing a pediatric product: It has to be easy to administer, it can’t be hard to swallow, and it can’t be bitter. In the industry, Adare is seen as an expert in deploying strategies and technologies to overcome these challenges.

Another area driving growth for us is oncology. As I look at our pipeline, a large proportion of the products we’re developing are cancer drugs. Oncology continues to be one of the largest development areas for the industry as a whole; almost half of the drugs in development are cancer drugs, and 75% of those are highly potent. This underscores how important our expanded high-potency infrastructure investments will be in proactively meeting the future needs of our customers.

Adare has also recently been expanding its capabilities in Europe. Is this an important market for Adare?

Europe is a very important region for us, and we’re excited to expand our capabilities and market reach there. Initially, we’re investing in upgrades and expansions for our Pessano site in Milan, Italy to offer greater capacity and capabilities throughout all of Europe.

In Europe, blister packs are generally preferred over bottles for oral solids, so we’ve added a purpose-built packaging hall capable of more than 50 million blisters a year. This expansion also provides a 1,000 square-meter warehouse with capacity for 900 pallets, as well as space to accommodate a second packaging line in the future.

We’ve also added a dedicated high-shear mixer granulation suite that allows us to provide even broader oral dose capabilities. The site’s analytical and formulation laboratories are receiving high potency capabilities as part of the upgrades across our network.

ESG is a growing topic for private equity, how is Adare making strides in that direction?

Last year, we built out a comprehensive ESG strategy with nine pillars and we have specific targets for everything from our carbon footprint to waste reduction goals and DEI. We are pleased with the progress we’ve made so far; last year we were awarded an Ecovadis bronze medal rating.

What will be the key catalysts for CDMO growth in 2024?

Consolidation will certainly be an important topic in the industry this year. The CDMO landscape is highly diversified: For comparison, the top 10 CROs make up 80% of that segment, but within CDMOs, the top 10 make up less than 20%. There are hundreds of firms out there offering very specific services, and this will ultimately lead to more consolidation within the industry.

On the scientific side, there are several promising trends out there that I think will drive growth. AI has already proven itself in terms of efficiency and quality. We recently reviewed over 25 AI applications and prioritized four or five that will help differentiate our services. We are leveraging compound screening and AI analysis to better predict how compounds will work in the clinic.

Another important breakthrough is 3-D printing, which provides incredible benefits over traditional manufacturing. With 3-D printing, manufacturers can offer an easy and ultimately cost-effective way to provide faster prototyping, personalized dosages, and more complex formulations.

Looking ahead, oral solid versions of GLP-1s are an exciting opportunity and I believe there will be important technical breakthroughs that will enable these products to be reformulated into oral solid forms. Oral solids can provide many benefits including patient preference and scaling capacity, and can lower both production costs and pricing for patients.

What is Adare’s key priority for 2024?

Execution. We have a great strategy in place, one that’s already paid tremendous dividends, and 2024 is about continuing to execute on that strategy. Adare hit double-digit growth last year, and we are projecting double-digit growth again this year. We will keep growing through the Adare strategic framework, which is based on six main pillars: Client-centric culture, continuous improvement, quality, strategic planning, commercial effectiveness, and operation excellence.