De-Risking the CDMO Journey

SPONSORED CONTENT: Scaling programs from clinical trials to commercialization requires more than raw capacity — it demands supply chain redundancy and rigid quality systems, notes Kerrie Powell from Alcami.

As drug product demand surges, drug sponsors face increasing risks from vendor fragmentation and hand-off delays. To explore how CDMOs are evolving to meet the demands of a rapidly growing development pipeline, The Pharma Navigator spoke with Kerrie Powell, Senior Vice President, Sales, Alcami.

Click the video above to view the full interview.

Strategic Rationale Behind Expansion

TPN: Alcami has been making significant moves in the market, including a recent acquisition. Could you walk us through the strategic rationale behind the latest acquisition and how it aligns with Alcami’s broader vision in the CDMO space?

Powell: We were excited to announce our acquisition of Tjoapack in late April of this year (1). Tjoapack are experts in primary and secondary packaging, labeling, and supporting clients through commercialization. We knew Tjoapack, we had actually worked as a service provider for them, and this was a very exciting moment for Alcami as Tjoapack has sites in the Netherlands as well as in Tennessee. So, this was our first step into a European footprint, which is very exciting for our client base. 

This move was also important to our growth strategy as we have packaging at legacy Alcami, but with the growth we were seeing in our manufacturing business, we knew we either needed to build or buy, and Tjoapack was a great opportunity for us to expand our capabilities with a really strong team, capabilities, and capacity. So, this acquisition allows us to position ourselves with better service solutions for our partners and allows them to support them from early development, clinical, all the way through to commercialization.

Differentiating in a Competitive Market

TPN: From a commercial perspective, how does the expanded footprint, afforded through the acquisition, enhance Alcami’s position in an increasingly competitive CDMO landscape?

Powell: It is an increasingly competitive CDMO landscape for sure. Alcami has completed a number of acquisitions over the past few years, all of which have been very intentional to provide our client more service capabilities. For our partners, what they're looking for is a client that can support them throughout the lifecycle of their products, and this is really critical for us, as a mid-size CDMO, to be able to expand and position ourselves in this place in the market. This does differentiate us from other mid-size CDMOs because we have all of the service offerings. 

At legacy Alcami, we're very strong in oral solid dose manufacturing as well as sterile fill/finish manufacturing. We have strong analytical capabilities — we were actually formed as an analytical shop back in 1979 — and we have a GMP storage through an acquisition from a number of years ago. We've continued to build on that base and then this addition of the packaging just provides all the service offerings that our clients need. This allows us to keep our clients with us and to give them good service, and allows them to understand what they're going to get from working with Alcami across broader service offerings.

Consolidating Vendors

TPN: When a CDMO expands through acquisition activity, drug sponsors naturally want to know how their ongoing and future programs may be impacted. So, what immediate benefits will Alcami’s existing and new customers experience in terms of capacity, capabilities, and project delivery?

Powell: That’s a great question and, of course, when you're going through an acquisition, you are thinking about your clients and how they're going to receive the news. I got the privilege of picking up the phone and calling some of our strategic partners, and there was a lot of excitement from them to understand that we were adding these capabilities. Some of them were already working with Tjoapack, so we had shared clients, which is even more exciting.

What we're able to do, first of all, is help reduce risk and complexity in the management of our clients’ vendors. You hear about this issue all the time: Clients are working with many, many vendors — little pieces here, little pieces there — but now they can consolidate and understand what they're getting from Alcami because they've worked with us before. So, there's great excitement. While the acquisition has enabled expansion of our packaging services, it's really fundamentally more about that end-to-end service offering. I think that aspect also allows us to grow with our clients. If you look at our manufacturing, for example, our sterile manufacturing, our lines are built to scale. Therefore, we can support very small batch sizes, whether it's for rare diseases, orphan diseases, or clinical stage, but then now also support clients on the commercial side and commercial scale straight into that packaging. So this is a really nice add-on. And because we can move quickly as far as agreements and business processes, that allows us to let our clients enjoy those benefits quickly.

Harmonization, Touchpoints, and Network Redundancy

TPN: Pharma and biotech developers frequently cite vendor fragmentation and hand-off risks as major pain points. How does this integration support a more seamless, single-partner journey for clients moving from early development to commercial scale?

Powell: Yeah, it's a really important point and we know it when, if a client's only bringing a portion of their program to us, we have to work to do tech transfers or pass information, all of which brings risk to the client. So, whenever we go through acquisitions, one of the things that's important to us first is to integrate and harmonize, and that's obviously with intention. This integration includes everything from our quality systems to our business processes. Again, in the case of the Tjoapack acquisition, where we have gained their expertise in packaging, we want to put the best practice in place, not what legacy Alcami did, but really look and evaluate. As such, there are very many people working hard right now on the integration but there's also been a focus on moving quickly in order to ensure that the clients can feel that we are working together in harmonization to make sure that their project is taken care of. 

I think that the partner journey is also about our program and project managers, which are the glue of every company and really the face of Alcami to our clients, which is such a critical role. Harmonization allows those people to support the client as well, so, single touch points, not only helps de-risk projects but also helps the client understand that they have that support. 

Also, I would highlight the redundancy we have throughout our network. So, I mentioned already that we had packaging in Wilmington, North Carolina, and now in Tennessee and the Netherlands. But in terms of our laboratory network, we have multiple sites in the Carolinas, as well as in St. Louis, Missouri, that has redundancy or stability programs. We also have formulation development and sterile manufacturing at two sites, one in Charleston, South Carolina, one in North Carolina. All of these provisions help our clients be reassured that they're consolidating vendors but also getting access to redundancy, which gives them peace of mind.

Surging Biologics and Injectables

TPN: Diving into operational demand specifically in sterile fill/finish manufacturing, what key drivers and market trends are fuelling the surge in demand for Alcami’s sterile fill/finish capabilities?

Powell: Well, as everybody knows, it is down to biologics, which are booming. It's so exciting to be part of this growth in the industry and to really see how far everything's come and where things are moving after being in the business so long. 

There's a lot of demand for pre-filled syringe, sterile injectables. And so again, with six fill/finish lines, with us expanding capacity on those lines, this really sets us up in a good position to support our clients. I think there's also a need for flexible and scalable manufacturing. It goes back to what I said earlier, which is where clients want to come in and maybe run a small batch to start out for clinical or orphan diseases, they can do that with Alcami. Then, they can scale as they get further down their development path. 

Additionally, I think that also, at Alcami, we have a client base of large pharma, as well as biotech, who are looking to outsource strategic programs to us because we can support and overcome challenges in their internal capacity. So, we work with all size clients, and we want them all to have the same experience with Alcami.

Connecting Fill/Finish to Cold Chain Packaging

TPN: As more sterile products move through your fill/finish lines, there is a natural ripple effect downstream. How is this growth in sterile fill/finish directly accelerating business for Alcami’s packaging operations?

Powell: Yes, the demand is high with sterile and, again, this is a result of all of those clinical batches that need to be packaged. Those batches could go to our Wilmington site or to the legacy Tjoapack sites. 

There’s a big drive in this area, from biologics, but also it is about cold chain storage. So, cold chain becomes really important to think about. However, we are looking at all the different technologies that clients are using and we'll continue to invest and support the direction in which clients are going. But the growth of sterile fill/finish directly feeds into that part of the business, into packaging.

Quality Culture and Talent

TPN: With rapid growth across both fill/finish and packaging services, maintaining fast onboarding times and strict quality standards is critical. How is Alcami scaling its operational infrastructure and talent to maintain reliable timelines?

Powell: Such an important question. Once we share with people our capabilities, they understand the scale we can support, but it really comes down to our ability to grow this business with intention. And really people are the biggest key to that. 

We're hiring across our organization, we keep the bar high for people that join Alcami, we look for people with GMP experience and experience in CDMO. The pace in the CDMO sector is different than other industries and, so, we look for people and also focus on retaining top talent. You want to make sure you keep people and develop them, it's really the people that are the difference maker, from our project managers to the people who are the front of the sales team. 

For example, my sales team is making sure that they're making connections with clients. Clients want an experience; they want to understand we're going to deliver on time. Quality is the foundation of any organization in this business and Alcami at the core of Alcami’s culture is quality. So, as we're scaling and adding all different things as far as, looking at batch release times, onboarding, we have metrics for all of these and we look and make sure we're measuring what we're doing so that we can pivot quickly. 

We seek feedback from our clients internally. We speak a lot about what we can do because you've got to scale right, it's the most important part of an acquisition, it's the most important part of the business. And, so, it's really at the front of our minds as we're going day-to-day. Therefore, what used to work may not fit right now, and you have to be able to evolve and, then, you have to talk. And our clients are very vocal; they're happy to share with us with what they appreciate and works, and we want to listen and we want to hear that feedback.

I think this is one of the most critical parts; quality and a strong regulatory track record are just critical and paramount. And, so, we talk about talent a lot and it's got to be part of the company's culture. And I'm proud to say it is at Alcami.

Future Outlook

TPN: Finally, looking ahead over the next 12–24 months, where do you see the biggest growth opportunities for Alcami and what can your partners expect next from your evolving capabilities?

Powell: I think without question, it's going to be continued in the biologic space. With our lines growing, the packaging growing, you may have seen, we announced earlier this year, an expansion of our biologics labs that's co-located with our Research Triangle Park manufacturing facility (2). This is about adding additional capabilities and capacity. 

The other piece that we've added is cold chain storage, both on-site with our manufacturing sites as well as co-located with long-term GMP storage. We're going to continue to look at how to support clients in this space, and we'll continue to grow with them. And I think that's what's really important is that we want to be on the journey, we want to be a partner, and partnership means you share where you're going and they tell us where they're going so that we can make sure we're aligned with them. 

So, it's an exciting journey ahead and I know Alcami is going to continue to grow and support our clients.

References

1. Alcami. Alcami to Acquire Contract Packaging Organization Tjoapack. Press Release, April 21, 2026.

2. Alcami. Alcami Acquires RTP Facility to Further Expand Biologic Capabilities. Press Release, Jan. 19, 2026.

About the Interviewee

Kerrie Powell is the Senior Vice President, Sales for Alcami. Kerrie is a passionate leader with a proven Life Sciences track record, including developing and implementing sales strategies and building high-performance teams. She joined Alcami in 2020, and previously served as Senior Director of Client Lab Services and Vice President of Sales, Lab Services before her promotion to head sales for all corporate divisions.

Prior to Alcami, Kerrie served as Executive Director, Animal Health for Cambrex (formerly Avista Pharma Solutions/SCYNEXIS, Inc.) where she managed the team responsible for the discovery and development of novel molecules for animal health indications with oversight of technical and business development. She earned a Master of Science and a Bachelor of Science in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Florida in Gainesville.

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