Siegfried has celebrated the start of the construction of its new large-scale production plant in Minden, Germany. The planned production plant, for which Siegfried will invest up to CHF 100 million, is the largest building project in the company's history. The new facility, which is expected to start operations in 2024, will host up to 100 m3 additional reactor capacity. This will not only significantly increase the capacity of Siegfried's drug substance business, but also expand the technological capabilities and the flexibility of Siegfried's global network.

Wolfgang Wienand, CEO of Siegfried said at the ground-breaking ceremony: "We have grown successfully in a very challenging environment over the past years and want to continue on this path. The new facility in Minden will help us to become an even more attractive partner for our customers. Minden offers us an ideal environment for this major investment, and we look forward to offering even more exciting jobs here in the future."

With this new plant, Siegfried is also strengthening Germany as a production location, where the company in Minden and Hameln employs close to 1000 employees. At its two German sites, Siegfried is manufacturing a wide range of pharmaceutical API as well as drug products. In Hameln, the vaccine against the coronavirus from Pfizer/BioNTech is filled, among other things.

The Siegfried Group is a global life sciences company with sites in Switzerland, Germany, Spain, France, Malta, the USA and China. In 2021, the company achieved sales of 1.1 billion Swiss francs and employed on 31.12.2021 more than 3'600 people at eleven sites on three continents.

In the first half of 2022, Siegfried Group continued the previous year's good performance and made further progress concerning the implementation of the corporate strategy geared to long-term profitable growth.

Net sales amounted to CHF 586.7 million, a growth of 25.7 percent in Swiss francs and 29.9 percent in local currencies. In addition to the positive business development in both clusters, Drug Substances and Drug Products, price increases due to higher raw material and production costs contributed to the growth as well. Moreover, the prior period was affected by the cyberattack from end of May 2021.

Core EBITDA amounted to CHF 130.2 million (prior period: CHF 80.5 million), representing a Core EBITDA margin of 22.2% (prior period: 17.3%). Core net profit amounted to CHF 65.2 million (prior period: CHF 32.6 million). Cash flow from operating activities reached CHF 128.1 million (prior period: CHF 85.7 million) before changes in net working capital, and CHF 76.3 million (prior period: CHF 96.9 million) after changes to net working capital.

The Integration of the two new sites in Barcelona, which Siegfried acquired beginning of 2021, is on schedule. Many of the services, especially IT services, provided by Novartis for a transition period, have been onboarded, and Siegfried expects to be entirely autonomous by the end of 2022. With its deep pool of well-educated employees, the Barcelona sites play a significant role in Siegfried's network, not only as a production sites, but also as a location for various global functions, especially in finance and IT.