Actavis Group, a privately held generic pharmaceuticals company based in Iceland, has acquired a 90% stake in a China API maker, Zhejiang Chiral Medicine Chemicals Company. Activis said that moving some of its API sourcing to Chiral would result in “significant” reduction in costs for the company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Chiral, which was founded in 2001, employs almost 200 workers in its Hangzhou API manufacturing plant. Its products are sold to ex-China pharmaceutical companies.

Actavis has already established an API R&D and manufacturing facility in India with a pipeline of 70 products. Besides supplying Actavis with APIs, the two plants will sell APIs to other pharmaceutical companies.

Activis is a large, geographically dispersed enterprise that has used acquisitions to increase its reach. Its first acquisition was Balkanpharma in 1999, and it bought Alpharma’s (NYSE: APO) generic business in 2005 for $810 million. Activis has operations in 40 countries and 11,000 employees.


Disclosure: none.