Quality raw materials are the backbone of any industry, especially Life Sciences, where robust manufacturing processes, exceptional quality control and regulatory compliance are demanded from suppliers.
Actylis is a leading manufacturer and supplier of critical raw materials and performance ingredients serving the Life Science industry. It offers standard and custom ingredients through its rapidly growing portfolio of GMP and non-GMP facilities worldwide and further choice through its strong sourcing hub network.
It gives a unique hybrid option blending manufacturing and global sourcing, combined with more than 75 years of industry experience. Its tagline reads ‘Partner of Choice,’ showcasing a commitment to be a partner, rather than a supplier, to its clients.
Actylis is the result of the amalgamation of eleven different companies (A&C, A&C Bio Buffer, Aceto, Biotron Laboratories, Cascade Chemistry, Finar, InterActifs, IsleChem, Pharma Waldhof, Syntor Fine Chemicals, and Talus), each with key niche and mainstream strengths.
Many of these companies were acquired between 2019 and early 2022, and the Actylis brand was born at the end of September of 2022. Internal and customer research revealed that having 11 separate brands was no longer sustainable. Instead, a single, unified brand was needed to showcase its hybrid approach.
Actylis has grown from 200 people to over 850 in ten countries across three continents. Sales are over $600+ million per year, and it has manufacturing and R&D facilities across the globe. This business growth has been in parallel with diversification growth – improving the gender and race, balance across all levels of seniority within the organisation.
In an exclusive interview with Insights Success, Gearoid O’Rourke, VP of Global Marketing, shares Actylis’ birth, its edge in the modern competitive landscape, and how it plans to deliver on its development plans.
Below are the highlights of the interview:
What was the initial idea behind the creation of Actylis?
Actylis was created to unite a wide range of capabilities of several manufacturing and sourcing specialists for the life science industry into a new, global enterprise with a unique hybrid approach that is greater than the sum of its parts.
The synergies that exist between the individual companies (A&C, A&C Bio Buffer, Aceto, Biotron Laboratories, Cascade Chemistry, Finar, Inter-Actifs, IsleChem, Pharma Waldhof, Syntor Fine Chemicals, and Talus) have allowed us to create a company that provides key benefits to our customers in high-growth end markets, including Biopharma, pharma, cosmetics, nutrition, and specialty chemicals.
Actylis brings together our combined broad competencies, intimate knowledge of customers’ needs, consultative perspective, and focus on innovation and quality to provide unparalleled choice and flexibility to our customers.
What are the primary objectives and philosophy of Actylis?
Actylis is the culmination of an ambitious initiative launched several years ago to address the major unmet need for better and more dependable access to critical raw materials and performance ingredients essential for the manufacture of highly regulated products in key industries. The supply chain challenges of the past few years have made our vision for Actylis especially relevant, and we are proud to help our customers dependably manufacture the life-giving products we all rely on.
What product/service offerings set you apart from your competitors?
With over 75 years of manufacturing and sourcing experience and a portfolio of GMP and non-GMP manufacturing facilities across multiple regions, we offer customers the flexibility to choose from a wide product portfolio and customized solutions, all backed by the same world-class quality, supply chain reliability, and regulatory expertise. Our capabilities include global R&D centers of excellence, GMP and Non-GMP manufacturing plants in various locations in North America, Europe, and Asia, sourcing hubs at strategic locations, as well as global supply chain, technical sales and quality teams in over 10 countries.
What do you see as the key short term challenges facing your industry?
Companies like us must be able to move quickly to adjust to the challenges of the life science industry. We have built our strategy around agility and flexibility to manage the developing areas that our industry face:
- A move towards more local supply to mitigate risk.
- A reversal of raw material supplier consolidation to friend-shoring and supply diversity.
- An even greater focus on sustainability.
- A reduction of focus on lean models, replaced by smarter inventory planning approaches and supplier diversity.
How is Actylis adapting to the ever-changing demands of your customers?
Actylis’ business strategy was born out of the current market trends in the Life Science sector – the need for more flexibility and agility in raw material manufacturing and supply.
As our industry evolves and manufacturing processes develop, we constantly review global and local technological advances and legislative & regulatory changes to ensure we are at the cutting edge. As an example, we have rolled out a global eQMS (MasterControl) to ensure we are all operating on the unified system to give our customers assurance of our global quality management regardless of location.
How do you deal with the constant innovation challenges from your customer?
The industry we serve is a global leader in innovative technology adoption, such as targeted therapies and gene and cell therapies. As a raw material supplier, we also need to be flexible and agile to create customized critical raw materials to serve this innovative market. Our R&D Centers of Excellence work closely with our customers to develop novel and niche ingredients to enable our customers more rapidly commercialize their finished drug products.
How is Actylis dealing with its environmental, social and local community responsibilities?
For the global community, we have recently launched our corporate sustainability strategy, focusing on three key areas – ensuring environmental and social standards in our supply chain, monitoring our carbon emissions and reducing our climate impact, and caring for the environmental footprint of our products. You can find out more information about our sustainability journey on our website.
From a local perspective, we support community initiatives in many of the localities that we have facilities in and support many local and international initiatives and charities.
What is the next chapter for Actylis?
Our strategy is simple – provide our customers with a choice. We will continue to mature this strategy via organic growth and more acquisitions in the life science sector over the coming years.
