Europe's Last Penicillin Plant on the Brink: Sandoz Warns a Regulatory Move Could Be a 'Death Blow' as China's Share Hits 86%
Kundl, Austria — The Sandoz plant in the Austrian Alpine town of Kundl is Europe's last fully integrated penicillin factory, making the antibiotic from raw active ingredients through to finished products. Sandoz chief executive Richard Saynor told Bloomberg this week that Europe's medicines regulator wants to drop amoxicillin from its list of critical medicines, a move he called a potential death blow to the plant.
"We're now literally at one minute to midnight to deciding whether we continue to stay in Europe making penicillin," Saynor said. Sandoz shares fell as much as 8.3 percent on the day, their worst drop on record.
The plant's problems are about cost. China's share of EU imports of penicillins and their ingredients rose from 44 percent in 2019 to 86 percent last year, according to Eurostat data, and injectable-amoxicillin raw-material prices have plunged 56 percent since January last year, close to an all-time low. The Kundl plant can make 240 million packages a year, enough for most of Europe and North America, but Saynor said it is running at just over half its capacity.
Placement on the critical medicines list is the door to funding and protected procurement under the EU's new Critical Medicines Act, support that could let a higher-cost European operation survive. The plant completed a 200-million-euro expansion three years ago, including 50 million euros in public funds, after an amoxicillin shortage that began in late 2022. In March, Sandoz filed an anti-dumping complaint with the European Commission, accusing Chinese amoxicillin makers of selling below production cost.
"If the plant closes, Europe will be completely dependent on China," Kundl site director Stephanie Jedner told Reuters. The site employs more than 2,000 people and uses roughly as much electricity as the nearby city of Innsbruck, home to over 130,000 people.
The pressure showed in the company's results: third-quarter net sales came in at $2.94 billion, short of the roughly $3.01 billion consensus, and Sandoz cut its full-year sales-growth guidance to 5 to 6 percent, saying an anti-infective wholesale headwind stripped about two percentage points off quarterly growth.
(Source: Reuters)
Source: Reuters
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：奥地利蒂罗尔州昆德尔镇（欧洲最后一座一体化青霉素工厂所在地，资料图）。CC BY-SA 3.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / Photo: Kundl, Tyrol, Austria, home to Europe's last fully integrated penicillin plant (file photo). CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
