Daiichi Sankyo Company Limited has reached a basic agreement with Alfresa Pharma Corporation for the transfer of Daiichi’s plant in Akita, Japan, to Alfresa Pharma. The move is part of a previously announced plan by Daiichi Sankyo to reorganize three of its subsidiaries into two companies. Daiichi Sankyo is reorganizing its Japanese supply-chain subsidiaries (Daiichi Sankyo Propharma (DSPP), Daiichi Sankyo Chemical Pharma Co., Ltd. (DSCP), and Daiichi Sankyo Logistics Co., Ltd. (DSLG) into two companies by April 2015. The remaining two companies will be DSCP, with active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) production functions, and DSPP (which will include DSLG), with dosage forms production and logistics functions.

The Daiichi Sankyo Group currently has five API manufacturing plants in Japan, but as a result of an evaluation of its global production system, it decided to transfer the Akita plant to a company outside the Group. The recipient of the transfer, Alfresa Pharma, is a pharmaceutical production company under the Alfresa Holdings Corporation, which mainly produces dosage forms. It is investing in a plan to expand the scale of pharmaceutical production and increase revenue. Based on this plan, Alfresa Pharma is aiming to strengthen its production business, and following transference, the Akita plant is expected to be the focal point of API production. The Akita plant currently employs 100 people and has annual capacity of 300 tons of APIs.

In September 2014 a new 100% subsidiary company of Daiichi Sankyo (i.e., Akita new company) will be established, and this Akita new company will take over all work relating to the Akita plant. Subsequently, on April 1, 2015, all stock of the Akita new company will be transferred to Alfresa Pharma. Meanwhile, workers at the Akita plant will in principle continue to work as employees of the Akita new company. After the transfer of stock, Daiichi Sankyo will continue production of its products produced by the Akita new company using the same equipment and quality assurance system as before.

Source: Daiichi Sankyo