Drug delivery specialist manufacturer Nemera has announced the opening of a new site to produce plastic components for diabetes giant Novo Nordisk.
The new building will be mostly dedicated to the production of components for Novo Nordisk’s pen needles.
Marc Hämel, Nemera’s CEO, and Morten Keller Caspersen, Novo Nordisk’s corporate vice president, laid the foundation stone for the new "Hall 6 manufacturing" building of Nemera La Verpillière on Thursday 21 March at Nemera’s headquarters and production plant in La Verpillière, France.
The ceremony was held in the presence of Patrick Margier, La Verpillière mayor, and several other local elected officials and stakeholders.
The construction project for this new production hall is the result of a new collaboration between Nemera and Novo Nordisk, one of the key players in diabetes care, which has been operating in France for 60 years.
Breaking ground at the new facility
Marc Haëmel, Nemera’s CEO said: “We are very proud of this new collaboration with Novo Nordisk. We share the same values and the same goal, to improve patients’ lives, providing easy and safe drug delivery devices.
“We leverage decades of manufacturing and development experience in the parenteral device segment and I hope that this first stone is only the beginning of a long way together.”
This new building will be almost entirely dedicated to the production of injected plastic parts, for the Novo Nordisk site in Hjørring, Denmark, which is specialised in the production of needles for insulin injection.
Speaking on the occasion, Morten Keller Caspersen, corporate vice-president at Novo Nordisk said: “We chose Nemera for many good reasons: impressive manufacturing skills, R&D skills and experience in products development and manufacturing. In general, we got the impression that Nemera thinks and acts like us - being open and honest, transparent in what you do, and operating straight forward processes with out too much complexity.
“Even though the project is still in the early stages, Nemera has already shown its execution capabilities: the first batches were received with approx. 6 months lead time.
“So, it is very good start for what I expect will become a long and fruitful collaboration between our two companies, and I am happy to take part in this very concrete manifestation of our agreement that this ceremony represents.”
This investment of €19.3 million will create 150 indirect and 50 direct jobs at the La Verpillière site, including operators, logisticians as well as production, maintenance and quality technicians.
This project is being jointly funded by Nemera and Novo Nordisk.