Bespak (
www.bespak.com), which has its headquarters in King’s Lynn, has invested about £40 million in the last three years after securing large contracts.
The company, which recorded a turnover of £117.2 million in the year to the end of April, is working alongside pharmaceutical giant Mylan to produce inhalers for its generic asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) drug, as well as manufacturing a nicotine inhalation device for Nicovations, which will deliver the drug without using heat, like ‘vaping’ devices.
Managing director Keyvan Djamarani said the workforce at the King’s Lynn site would rise from 750 to more than 1,000 if the new programmes develop as planned. “Both of these products are going through industrialisation with the aim of launching in the next calendar year, obviously dependent on getting the proper licences,” he said.
“We also have taken on more work at Bespak, which I can’t divulge at this stage, and we will be expanding one of our cleanrooms to increase our capacity for a number of customers. I have been working at Bespak for 18 years, and this is the busiest I remember it in all that time.”
While some of the investment has been in Bespak’s Milton Keynes site, Dr Djamarani said King’s Lynn would continue to be the heart of its operations. For the Mylan contract, Bespak has built a 5,500ft2 cleanroom, which is believed to be the largest in the country.
One area where Bespak is hoping to get ahead of its competitors is in the injectables market, with interest being generated in products designed by the firm’s growing development team in Cambridge.
Commercial director Steve Ellul said: “We are in talks with most of the world’s major pharma companies. There are a lot of products coming through which can only be injected — rather than inhaled, put in a tablet or anything else.
“To reduce the number of injections a patient has, you need to deliver a larger amount of the drug in a more-viscous liquid form in one injection. Our technology is very well placed to do that.”