Founded in 1950 as a pharmacy in Ravensburg, Germany, Vetter has grown into a global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) specializing in the aseptic filling of syringes, cartridges and vials. With this year marking the 75th anniversary of the family-owned business, the company is looking back but also ahead to meet future growth in serving drug product development, aseptic injectables, device assembly, and packaging.
Pharmacist Helmut Vetter’s decision to lease the Marien-Apotheke pharmacy in Ravensburg laid the foundation for Vetter as a leading contract manufacturer. Among the CDMO’s many milestones: In 1979, Helmut Vetter came up with an innovative idea — the ready-to-use prefilled syringe, which quickly became the centerpiece of the company’s production strategy.
“Helmut recognized the huge potential worldwide for prefilled syringes, which is still a business focus of ours to this day,” said Carsten Press, Vetter’s managing director for its global sales organization, supply chain management, strategy, and legal and compliance.
Press told Pharma Manufacturing that the CDMO’s nearly eight decades as a family-owned business has been a core strength, which has fueled Vetter’s growth over the years to a company currently with more than 7,300 employees worldwide. Helmut Vetter’s children, and the next generation, have continued his vision for the company.
“We have a long-term strategy in place based on strong values and company culture,” Press said.
In 2024, Vetter generated sales of more than €1.1 billion and beating the previous year’s sales by 11%. For 2025, the CDMO expects to reach approximately €1.3 billion in sales. Over the next few years, the company projects a 10% annual growth rate as part of its strategic planning.
“We have maintained our agility and flexibility to adjust to bigger volumes and the latest technology — it comes down to the needs of patients and our customers,” Press said. “Our customers are inventing and licensing new molecules. The fill-and-finish part is increasingly becoming more of a service element, which we have strong capabilities in.”
Investments in US, Germany
With manufacturing sites in Germany, Austria, and the United States, the CDMO is strengthening its presence in the North American market and supplementing its existing clinical network in Skokie, Illinois and Rankweil, Austria.
“Currently, we have our operations in Skokie which is a rented building,” Press said. “We wanted to go the next step by building our own facility to maintain our long-term strategy in the U.S. We do more than half of our business in the U.S. In combination with the tariffs, we see it’s good to be there.”
Vetter is investing $285 million to build a clinical production facility in Des Plaines, Illinois, near Chicago. In June, the company broke ground and started construction on the site, which is expected to be ready for media filling by the end of 2029.
The investment in the new 860,000-square-foot site is meant to strengthen Vetter’s aseptic manufacturing capabilities in early clinical development and has the capacity to accommodate future expansion. The Des Plaines site will provide the CDMO with additional capacity for small-batch production of novel active ingredients, including space for warehouses, laboratories, and administrative offices.
“When we talk about end-to-end services, we have an early focus on quality with investments in innovation and the production environment,” Press said. “All of this is the basis for the investments we have recently made in the U.S. and Germany.”
The Des Plaines project marks the latest milestone in the company’s international growth strategy. Vetter’s planned site expansions including extending a production facility in Langenargen, Germany, and working on preliminary plans for a production facility in the South-West of Germany.
In March, Vetter announced the expansion of its Center for Visual Inspection and Logistics, located in Ravensburg, Germany, to accommodate increasing demand for the company’s pharmaceutical filling services.
Construction of the 22,500-square-meter extension began in late 2024, with completion expected by 2028. With an investment exceeding €150 million, the project will increase cold storage capacity by 16,000 pallet positions, bringing the total to 68,000 across various temperature requirements.
Vetter is an important player in large molecule drug product (finished dose) with a 10% share in the market over the last decade, according to a William Blair analysis of data on new drugs approved by the FDA going back 10 years. Since 2015, the analysts found that large molecule finished dose is dominated by four CDMOs: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Catalent, Vetter, and Ajinomoto, which together accounted for 43% of approvals.
According to Press, Vetter provides CDMO services for blockbuster drugs to mid-sized pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as Big Pharma.
“We are also focused on small- and mid-sized biotech companies with very high-value molecules for unmet patient needs,” Press said. “The feedback we’re getting from clients is that they need this support and services from us.”
