Codis has agreed to acquire Catalent’s Nottingham facility, expanding its UK pharmaceutical manufacturing base and strengthening its position in spray drying, amorphous solid dispersions, and particle engineering.
The transaction will add oral solid dose development and small-scale commercial manufacturing capability to Codis’ existing operations. The Nottingham site brings more than two decades of oral solid dose expertise and will sit alongside Codis’ Haverhill facility, where the company has been investing in commercial-scale spray drying capability.
Subject to customary closing conditions, the acquisition is expected to complete in the third quarter of 2026. Once closed, the deal will give Codis a more integrated route from development and clinical supply through to commercial intermediates and final oral dose forms.
The connection between particle engineering and oral solid dose manufacturing is becoming more important as drug pipelines shift toward molecules with more difficult formulation profiles. Spray drying is widely used to improve solubility and bioavailability for poorly soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients, particularly through amorphous solid dispersions. As active ingredients become more complex, formulation and process engineering have moved closer to the centre of pharmaceutical development.
Bringing development, spray dry processing, and oral dose manufacturing closer together can reduce handover risk between stages. Technology transfer remains one of the more demanding points in pharmaceutical industrialisation, with process parameters, analytical methods, containment requirements, excipients, equipment settings, cleaning validation, and documentation all needing to move cleanly from one environment to another.
The acquisition also strengthens the UK’s position in a technically specific part of pharmaceutical production. Facilities such as Nottingham carry value because they support the difficult middle ground between promising formulation science and repeatable industrial output. That capability is particularly important where drug developers need to move from early development into clinical or small-scale commercial supply without rebuilding the technical pathway at every stage.
Spray drying is not a simple unit operation added to the end of formulation development. It influences particle morphology, residual solvent control, flow properties, stability, downstream handling, capsule or tablet performance, and scale-up behaviour. A formulation that works at laboratory scale still has to withstand industrial equipment, batch consistency requirements, environmental controls, and regulatory scrutiny.
The commercial pressure behind integrated support is growing as complex medicines become more common. Poor aqueous solubility remains a persistent barrier in small molecule development, and the techniques used to address it often require specialist process understanding. The manufacturing advantage arrives when that formulation work is backed by equipment capacity, quality systems, and validated process knowledge.
Contract development and manufacturing organisations are increasingly being judged on continuity as much as capacity. Fragmented supply chains can work when processes are straightforward, but they become harder to manage when the product depends on specialist particle engineering, sensitive analytical controls, and tightly documented manufacturing steps. Each transfer can add cost, delay, and variability.
Codis’ Nottingham move therefore gives the company more than additional site capacity. It creates a stronger UK platform for technically demanding oral medicines, where formulation science, process design, and manufacturing discipline increasingly sit inside the same commercial decision. The integration of Nottingham and Haverhill will determine how effectively Codis can support customers moving from development into dependable supply.
