The pharmaceutical Reig Jofre begins the year without the obligation of having to manufacture Covid vaccines for the multinational Janssen. The contract between the two companies expired in the last quarter of last year and has not been renewed. “The manufacturing capacity of the Barcelona plant is thus completely freed up to tackle Reig Jofre’s organic growth projects, which will place special focus on international markets,” the Catalan pharmaceutical company explains.
One of the main lines of business that will be boosted by this release of manufacturing will be that of biosimilars, complex molecules that exert competition on innovative biological products. “Manufacturing capacity is thus freed up to meet Reig Jofre’s need for the production of injectable productsas well as new products of greater complexity and added value, among them the new developments of biosimilars, which are being carried out in R&D projects both individually and in collaboration with other companies”, they add from the company.
The business maintained with Janssen for two years has not been as productive for the company as others that have been carried out by Spanish pharmaceutical companies, such as Rovi with Moderna. The vaccine from the innovative subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson did not develop in the market as expected, despite arriving with the advantage of being a single dose at a time when the drama of the pandemic was great. According to data from the Ministry of Health, almost two million vaccines were given in Spain, 10% of those initially purchased.
The Catalan pharmaceutical itself acknowledges that the contract for the Covid vaccine has not brought them anything exceptional over two years. “As a whole, the impacts derived from income and expenses linked to this contract present a result in line with the overall result obtained by the company in other manufacturing agreements,” they explain.
Reig Jofre closed the 2022 financial year with an ordinary income figure of 271.2 million euros, which represents a growth of 15% compared to the previous year, obtaining a gross margin of 58% on the sales figure. The income statement also shows the activation of projects for 3.1 million euros, basically corresponding to research and development projects.
