Novartis, the Swiss owner of the Ljubljana-based pharmaceutical company Lek, and its Chinese supplier Porton Pharma Solutions, will set up a biotechnological park in Mengeš, central Slovenia. Novartis will lease part of its vacant premises to Porton in what the N1 news portal reports will create 300 new jobs.

Porton is to lease about 900 square meters of office space, 4,140 square metres of labs for research and development and a production facility from Novartis.

"This will allow the company to create its own R&D facilities and production inside the Life Science Park Mengeš," Lek told the STA, adding that Novartis would like to attract biotechnological companies to the location.

According to N1, Lek has been keen for Porton to arrive in Europe since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic because that would reduce risks of disruption to supplies.

Meanwhile, the agreement would allow Proton, which has sales offices in Belgium and Switzerland, to expand in the European market.

The Chinese company told N1 it would invest €50 million in the construction of R&D and manufacturing unit in Mengeš, which is slated for completion in autumn 2024. It is also planning to lease a plot north of the existing production location in Mengeš.

Porton is a contract development and manufacturing organization that provides active pharmaceutical ingredients, dosage forms, and biologics manufacturing services, as well as development and research. It employed 3,800 people last year. Employing 4,800 staff, Lek generated €1.3 billion in revenue, according to N1.

Lek is part of Novartis's generics arm Sandoz, which Novartis last year announced would spin off into a separate company. Novartis is to focus on treatments in haematology, oncology, immunology, neuroscience and cardiovascular diseases, while Sandoz is to keep the generics and biosimilars division.

Lek's production units in Ljubljana, Mengeš, Lendava and Prevalje work for both Novartis and Sandoz, which the portal reports will make the spin-off an organisational challenge.

The N1 writes that it is not clear yet how the activities will be reorganised and separated, which of the companies will take the Lek brand, which jobs will fall to which company and who will run Lek.

Biosimilars production units in Austria and Slovenia will manufacture biosimilars for Sandoz. It is planned for Sandoz to continue to supply key products to Novartis for further distribution in some key markets, in particular in Sub-Saharan Africa, Novartis commented for N1 last year.