Brenntag is Building a Unique Position in Both Traditional Pharma and Biopharma
Author: Gust Desmedt, Global President Pharma, Brenntag Specialties
Brenntag is transforming its Pharma business — part of the Specialties division — with a bold new vision: to become the trusted strategic partner for biopharma innovation, while continuing to strengthen and grow its traditional Pharma business.
The pharmaceutical industry is undergoing profound change, and Brenntag is positioning itself at the center of this transformation. Biopharmaceuticals — therapies derived from living organisms rather than purely synthetic chemistry — are setting new standards for treatment. Monoclonal antibodies, recombinant proteins, mRNA vaccines, and advanced cell and gene therapies are reshaping medicine. The biopharma industry is expanding at more than 10% per year globally, outpacing traditional pharma, fueled by the increasing share of biologics in the drug pipeline, the rise of biosimilars, and breakthroughs in personalized and advanced therapies.
From our perspective as a chemical distributor, for customers this creates new challenges: demand for GMP-compliant raw materials, stricter quality requirements, smaller pack sizes, and value-added services that safeguard product integrity. For suppliers, it opens new opportunities — but also barriers: limited ability to serve smaller customers, meet regulatory complexity, and scale specialized pack formats.
Brenntag is embracing this challenge by building a unique position in both traditional pharma and biopharma — a combination that few players in the industry can match.
Traditional Pharma – Driving Growth Across Four Segments
Traditional pharma has long been the foundation of Brenntag’s business. But far from being a static or defensive position, it is an area where there are significant opportunities for growth. Brenntag’s strategy is focused on four attractive segments: regulated synthesis, excipients, APIs, and nutritional health.
In regulated synthesis, we are upgrading and broadening our portfolio in monograph-compliant and regulated, GMP-grade process chemicals and intermediates to ensure we remain an undisputed leader in this space. In excipients, we are building a comprehensive offering supported by formulation know-how, and technical expertise, while leveraging relationship with principals as well as our growing biopharma platform. In APIs, we are selectively expanding in low-volume and high-potent products to complement our excipient offering and address customer needs in differentiated therapeutic areas, while also pursuing China and India as important sourcing platforms to strengthen our competitiveness. And in nutritional health, we see attractive opportunities to apply our regulatory expertise and distribution capabilities to a growing global market.
This approach allows us to grow smartly against incumbent players, defend our core, and expand selectively into higher-value areas — strengthening Brenntag’s position as a trusted partner across the spectrum of traditional pharma.
Biopharma – Capturing the Next Wave of Growth
Biopharma represents the fastest-growing frontier in life sciences. Here, raw materials are not commodities but critical enablers of product success. Customers require GMP-compliant materials with low impurity, low bioburden, and endotoxin control, delivered in flexible pack sizes and often accompanied by testing and certification. Increasingly, both large and small biopharma companies are outsourcing their buffer and critical material needs to trusted partners.
Brenntag is deliberately investing to capture this growth. With the acquisition of MCE Pharma in the Czech Republic and the establishment of a state-of-the-art GMP hub in EMEA, we are creating a dedicated platform that bridges the gap between material supply and process readiness. This hub provides blending, conditioning, certification, and other formulation services that help reduce manufacturing bottlenecks and accelerate commercialization.
Our strategy goes further. We are developing a focused biopharma portfolio that leverages formulation services and selective co-branding with principals — a unique approach that strengthens partnerships and differentiates in a market where leading players market under their own brands. In China and India, we complement this with own-brand offerings tailored to local demand. With value-added services such as powder down-packing and liquid dilution, we enable suppliers to access smaller customers that have historically been served by life science solution providers, strengthening supplier relationships and securing new mandates.
Serving the Full Spectrum of Life Sciences
Together, our strong position in both traditional pharma and biopharma allows us to serve the full spectrum of life sciences — from small molecules to biologics, biosimilars, and advanced therapies. Traditional pharma provides maturity, regulatory depth, and formulation know-how across regulated synthesis, excipients, APIs, and nutritional health. Biopharma adds agility, innovation, and high-value services designed for the next generation of medicines.
This balanced model combines stability with innovation, maturity with growth, and scale with specialization. It ensures that Brenntag is not just keeping pace with the transformation of the pharmaceutical industry but actively shaping it — building a distribution model that enables the future of medicine.
Gust Desmedt, Global President Pharma, Brenntag Specialties
