Recipharm wrapping up its $105M deal for Indian sterile injectables maker Nitin

With cash in hand and an official nod from India, Sweden's Recipharm is just about ready to close on its deal to buy a majority stake in Indian sterile injectables maker Nitin Lifesciences.

The Swedish CMO announced on Monday that it had raised SEK 276 million ($32.5 million) through the sale of Class B shares that it intended to use for an acquisition announced in the fourth quarter. That would be its October agreement to pay SEK 872 million ($105.2 million) to buy from the Sobti family a 74% stake in their sterile injectables CMO. Earlier in the month, Recipharm said that the Indian Foreign Investment and Promotion Board had approved the deal and that it expected to close by the end of Q1.

When Recipharm CEO Thomas Eldered announced the deal, he said the Sobti family would keep the remaining stake, and the partners intend to grow in the Indian market and beyond. Recipharm projects that the combined organization will have annual revenue of SEK 3.5 billion ($423.3 million). The deal is expected to close in Q1 2016. Eldered pointed out that the Indian market was showing particularly high growth but that the two also would use the deal "for entry into other regions."

There has been plenty of M&A action with sterile injectables of late as the market grows and lots of drugmakers are looking for manufacturing operations they can buy to tap it. Just this week, it was reported that Schaumburg, IL-based sterile injectables maker Sagent Pharmaceuticals ($SGNT) is exploring a sale and that a handful of Indian drugmakers, like Cipla and Aurobindo, are looking it over.

Last year, Pfizer ($PFE) bought sterile injectables leader Hospira for $15 billion and Hikma expanded its operations the year before by picking up the Ben Venue line of injectable drugs from Germany's Boehringer Ingelheim.

January 27, 2016 | By Eric Palmer

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