COVID-19 vaccine contract

10 November 2020       

Contract for innovative delivery system for COVID-19 vaccine

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No 596/2014. The person responsible for making this announcement is David Bishop, Director of Investor Relations.

Croda International Plc ("Croda" or "the Group"), the speciality chemical company that uses smart science to create high performance ingredients and technologies that improve lives, today announces that it has recently entered into an agreement with Pfizer Inc. to supply novel excipients used in the manufacture of a COVID-19 vaccine candidate. The contract with Pfizer runs for five years and awards Croda an initial supply contract for four component excipients used in the production of the vaccine candidate for the first three years of the contract. Demand remains subject to relevant approvals.

Croda's recently acquired subsidiary, Avanti Polar Lipids, Inc. ("Avanti"), specialises in the development and production of high-purity lipids, to produce research and clinical trial quantities of excipients in order to stabilise formulations and enable delivery into the body by parenteral mechanism (injection) for drug and vaccine applications. Croda's existing health care business has a 20-year track record in developing IP-rich, innovative technologies for drug delivery systems for the pharmaceutical industry and has been working with Avanti, prior to and since its acquisition by Croda, to refine the complex processes involved in achieving the volumes of high-purity excipients required by its pharmaceutical customers. Croda has reprioritised investment, resources and other projects across the Group over the last few months to focus on the delivery of this project.

Commenting on the new contract, Steve Foots, Chief Executive Officer, said: 

"I'm very proud of Croda's involvement in the battle to fight the most significant pandemic that we have seen in a generation. The application of our innovative capabilities is testament to the strong progress we have made to create industry-leading drug delivery systems, focused on developing speciality excipients and adjuvants to improve the effectiveness and stability of complex drug actives and vaccines. It is another example of why our Purpose - Smart Science to Improve Lives - sits at the heart of our strategy and will continue to drive our priorities and ambitions in the years ahead."

Further information:

Explanatory notes:

Excipients play a central role in the drug development process, in the formulation of stable dosage forms and in their administration. Excipients are substances that serve as the vehicle or medium for a drug or other active substance to be delivered. Lipid systems provide a route to delivery of novel mRNA drugs and vaccines, by which a disease specific antigen can be coded into cells and recognised by the body's immune system, as an alternative to conventional vaccine approaches.

Croda completed its acquisition of Avanti on 12 August 2020. Avanti specialises in the development and production of high-purity polar lipids that are increasingly being used in next-generation drug delivery technology and vaccines. It sells a wide range of high-purity lipid products for pharmaceutical research and development and provides a comprehensive liposomal drug delivery development and production solution service to support customers' drug development, clinical trials and commercial supply of novel drug delivery systems. This is highly complementary with Croda's own drug delivery capability, manufacturing scale and global customer network.

The contribution from this contract is already included in Croda's trading expectations for 2020, including in its guidance of the impact of the Avanti acquisition. If Pfizer's publicly indicated vaccine doses for 2021 were to be required, the sales value of Croda's contract in 2021 could be of the order of $100 million.