Dive Brief:
- GE Healthcare said Friday it is investing $138 million to expand a contrast media fill and finish manufacturing site in Ireland.
- The company is building the facility on the grounds of an existing site to enable the production of 25 million more patient doses per year of contrast media imaging agents by the end of 2027.
- GE Healthcare disclosed the investment around two months after reaffirming its prediction that demand for the contrast media used in CT and X-ray imaging will double in the next 10 years.
Dive Insight:
GE Healthcare predicted that demand for iodinated contrast media will double in a decade in 2022. The company reiterated the prediction at its investor day in November, when its CEO of pharmaceutical diagnostics Kevin O’Neill said “we see increased interventional procedures that need contrast to perform the procedure, and greater access to healthcare is expanding contrast-enhanced procedures.”
The investment in the facility in Cork, Ireland, is part of GE Healthcare’s push to close the gap between supply and demand. In 2022, the company committed $80 million to boost production of contrast media active pharmaceutical ingredients in Norway and struck an iodine supply deal.
GE Healthcare added a production line at its existing Cork facility in 2022, enabling the site and other fill and finish plants in China and Norway to collectively ship more than 100 million patient doses of contrast media last year. The new, 3,000-square-meter Cork facility will house a filling line, solution preparation vessels and powder handling systems to further increase GE Healthcare’s fill and finish capacity.
The investment reflects the size of the opportunity. GE Healthcare estimated at its November investor day that contrast media is a $7 billion global market with a compound annual growth rate of 5% to 7%. The company valued the market at $5 billion in 2022, with a mid-single-digit growth rate. GE Healthcare has identified increases in interventional procedures and imaging in emerging markets as growth drivers.
O’Neill said “security of supply” is key to how GE Healthcare plans to win in the contrast media market. The company struggled to provide that security in 2022, when lockdowns in Shanghai prevented production and forced physicians in the U.S. to postpone nonemergency tests. Since then, GE Healthcare has added contrast media capacity in Norway and Ireland and taken steps to strengthen its supply chain.
