Athenex to build two new pharma manufacturing plants in China

Buffalo, USA-based oncology specialist Athenex, until recently known as Kinex Pharmaceuticals, announced on Friday the completion and execution of a definitive agreement with the Banan District in Chongqing, China, to construct two separate pharmaceutical manufacturing plants on Banan sites already identified and selected by Athenex management.

Under the terms of the accord, Banan will provide the funding for the land and construction of the manufacturing plants according to Athenex' specifications, and Athenex will equip the facilities.

Flint Besecker, Athenex’ chief operating officer, commented: "This agreement accomplishes several important goals for the company. First, it allows us to materially expand our existing high potency oncology active pharmaceutical ingredient manufacturing capacity. The existing plant from our recent acquisition of Polymed/Taihao located in Chongqing, China, is capacity constrained. The new API plant will be approximately five times larger and add significant capacity.”