Thermo Fisher CEO touts acquisition of Sanofi sterile manufacturing site in NJ
With Thermo Fisher Scientific’s recently announced acquisition of Sanofi’s sterile drug product manufacturing facility in Ridgefield, New Jersey, the life sciences tools and services company has expanded its strategic partnership with the French drugmaker to enable additional production capacity in the United States.
Under the agreement announced last week, Thermo Fisher is buying the site which specializes in fill‑finish and packaging of aseptic injectable medications and will continue to manufacture a portfolio of therapies for Sanofi. The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Thermo Fisher CEO Marc Casper told analysts in a Wednesday earnings call that the company will “invest in expanding production at the site to meet the growing demand for U.S. manufacturing capacity from our pharma and biotech customers.” The company’s other U.S. fill-finish sites are in Greenville, North Carolina and Plainville, Massachusetts.
Casper said there are advantages in acquiring capacity at Sanofi’s Ridgefield site versus building a greenfield facility, which can take several years to bring capabilities online. The sterile drug product facility in New Jersey employs more than 200 people, who will transition to Thermo Fisher upon the completion of the acquisition later in 2025.
“It’s a much more cost-effective way of doing it,” according to Casper. “You have trained operators, you have equipment that’s not a 100% utilized, and that we’re going to expand on that footprint. It’s great news for the team in New Jersey because they’ll be working on even more exciting molecules and we’ll be able to meet the demand, which is very strong with the increased capacity that we have in New Jersey.”
Overall, Casper noted that in the biopharma industry there’s a “heightened level of interest” in expanding U.S. manufacturing capacity, which he said can be seen in the recent commitments by Big Pharma companies for billions of dollars of domestic investment.
“You even see it in our announcement last quarter about expanding our domestic production because leveraging our CDMO capabilities is a very economically effective way as a pharmaceutical customer to reach our capacity and that really is a lot around Sanofi transaction,” Casper said.
In April, Thermo Fisher announced it was making a $2 billion commitment to U.S. manufacturing and R&D over the next four years, as the company looks to mitigate the effects of tariffs in a challenging macroeconomic environment.
On Wednesday’s earnings call, Casper said Thermo Fisher is partnering with customers to help them “navigate and thrive” in the current macroeconomic environment.
“For some customers, this means expanding U.S. capacity for drug production and supporting their reshoring efforts,” Casper told analysts. “For others, it’s about accelerating clinical research timelines by aggressively adopting AI into our processes. And then there are customers where it’s all about identifying ways to help them drive productivity.”
Sanofi’s Ridgefield site will become part of Thermo Fisher's pharma services business within its laboratory products and biopharma services segment, which represented more than 50% of the $42.9 billion revenue reported by the company in 2024.
Pharma services is seeing “very strong” growth, according to Casper, who noted that bioproduction is “doing really well” and Thermo Fisher is not seeing any customers pausing activities in that area of its business. The company reported second-quarter 2025 financial results on Wednesday.
