Ernesto Petroselli

President of CordenPharma International, Ernesto Petroselli, has been in the pharmaceutical industry for 4 decades; a long time to hone skills and develop an in-depth knowledge of the global pharma market. In fact, it’s fair to say that Ernesto is an expert. He joined CordenPharma in 2012 as managing director of their CordenPharma Latina facilty and was then promoted to president of the whole group the following year. Casting his expert eye on the industry, Ernesto spotted an opportunity for CordenPharma to capitalise on the rapidly-growing global pharmaceutical market.

"The pharma contract manufacturing market is very crowded, complex, and is growing all over the world. It’s quite segmented—most competitors are quite small and only offer a partial service—so I could see an opportunity for us to position ourselves slightly differently to the bulk of the companies, with a new value proposition," he says.

As a result, CordenPharma is a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO) that provides specialised technologies for the development and manufacturing of sterile, oral, and highly potent oncology, and antibiotic pharmaceutical drug products, as well as their Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and associated global supply chain and packaging services.

CordenPharma is especially suited for specialised niche market segments like peptides, lipids, and carbohydrates (often used for oligonucleotides), where they play a key role in developing both the APIs and drug products. Basically, it’s a one-stop shop.

"We built our strategy around 3 main pillars," Ernesto explains. "One is moving from facility-based needs to what we call technology platform-based needs. Our technology platforms are a slightly different concept—they cross more than one manufacturing site to provide an integrated combination of capabilities. The concept is something we have developed that’s been well-received by the market and has positioned us as slightly different from the usual concept of offering capabilities through manufacturing sites.

"The second point, that is increasingly important, is the concept of one-stop shopping. We are in a unique position to be a full-service supplier in the value chain, so the idea is to target companies that are either not very strong in supply chain, lacking a certain part of the supply chain, or don’t have a supply chain at all. For example, there are many companies—especially in the US—that only have research and sales, or only research and development. We believe that we are in a unique position in certain technology platforms, like antibiotics, highly potent oncology, and peptides, to provide end-to-end solutions. This is something that not many companies can offer, so it gives us diversification and a unique value proposition."