Roquette, a plant-based ingredients manufacturer for food, nutrition and health markets, has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in India- based pharmaceutical excipients manufacturer Crest Cellulose from Pravesha Industries.
Image: Roquette acquires majority stake in Crest Cellulose. Photo: Courtesy of Roquette Frères.
Crest Cellulose’s technology and production capabilities will add up to the existing expertise Roquette has in the field of pharmaceutical excipients.
Both the companies work towards innovation, quality and excellence and the merger is expected to create new prospects for both companies’ customers and employees.
Roquette says this joint-venture will strengthen its position in the pharmaceutical industry as a major supplier of natural-based pharmaceutical excipients.
Crest Cellulose, a privately-owned company incorporated in 2012 is located in Hyderabad and in Nellore locations in India. With good infrastructure and technical platform, the company manufactures a variety of excipients to meet growing demand in the pharmaceutical market.
In 2017 Roquette has acquired Blanver Pharmaceutical’s excipients division Itacel. With this merger, Roquette expands its scope of pharmaceutical excipients and nutraceuticals. It also supports Roquette’s vision to increase its footprint and proximity in India to serve the large and fast-growing pharmaceutical market.
India supplies over half of the world’s demand for various vaccines, and 25% of all medicines. The size of this market is anticipated to be $33bn in 2017 and it has been growing at more than 10% per year at the beginning of 2018.
Roquette CEO Jean-Marc Gilson said: “The creation of this joint-venture with Pravesha Industries is key in the development of our service offering in the pharmaceutical market: Crest Cellulose is not only a perfect fit from a product portfolio point of view, but it will also help us strengthen our geographic presence in Asia to better serve our clients in the region and address a global growing market.
“We are looking forward to working alongside Crest Cellulose’s talented employees to help our customers address global health challenges.”
Crest Cellulose director Madan Mohan Reddy said: “We are happy to partner with Roquette in furthering growth of Crest Cellulose by way of majority divestiture. Through this transaction, we believe both our employees and the excipient business will thrive under Roquette majority ownership and leadership.
“We sincerely appreciate the countless contributions of our team through the incubation of Crest Cellulose in bringing out an unprecedented world class facility for the manufacture of excipients. Roquette has a proven track record in the area of excipients globally and we are confident they will leverage this transaction to create long term value for all stakeholders.”
Roquette is the major shareholder and will have a controlling stake to manage the day-to-day operations of Crest Cellulose.