Siegfried Holding AG is a Swiss company that works behind the scenes in the pharmaceutical industry. It does not sell its own branded medicines but instead supports other pharmaceutical companies by helping them develop and manufacture their products.
Siegfried specializes in making the active ingredients in medicines—the parts that actually treat the illness—as well as producing the final forms, such as tablets, capsules, and injections. The company offers a full range of services, from helping to develop new medicines to manufacturing and packaging them.
Siegfried acts as a trusted partner to pharmaceutical companies
In simple terms, Siegfried acts as a trusted partner to pharmaceutical companies, helping turn their ideas into real, safe medicines that patients use every day.
The story began in 1870, when Samuel Benoni Siegfried took over his grandfather’s pharmacy. Three years later, with his brother-in-law Johann Wilhelm Dürselen, he founded the company “Siegfried & Dürselen, Chemical-Pharmaceutical Preparations Production and Drugs Business.”
Benoni Siegfried soon recognized the market potential of producing pharmaceutical substances in larger quantities. In the early 1870s he declared “other pharmacists need the same basic substances as me. So, I’m going to produce ether, chloral and phenol in large volumes for them.”
Source: Siegfried
Pharmacists realized that it was safer and easier to buy these substances rather than self-produce and in 1880, Benoni Siegfried stepped away from his pharmacy to fully focus on his industrial business. Right from the very start, Siegfried produced and packaged products for third parties – contract manufacturing – the core business today and a constant throughout the company’s 150-year history.
In the 1892/93 financial year, sales revenue passed the million-franc mark for the first time. By the turn of the century, Siegfried employed 60 people – five times more than when it started, and the best was yet to come!
With his health ailing, Benoni Siegfried converted the company from a sole proprietorship into a joint stock corporation in 1904. The first Board of Directors was set up and the newly established company took over all assets, worth 1,360,000 CHF.
During the World Wars in Europe, pharmaceutical demand surged, and by the 1950s, Siegfried had established itself as a reliable producer of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), especially in pain management, anti-inflammatory drugs, and cardiovascular treatments.
Fed up with import barriers against European pharmaceutical firms, Siegfried, together with distribution partner Gane & Ingram, set up its first US subsidiary, “Ganes Chemical Works” in New Jersey in 1927.
In 1973, on the company’s 100th anniversary, it was listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange.
Until the early 1980s, Siegfried offered a broad range of services. The family business developed and produced fine chemicals, specialist drugs and generics, pest control agents and natural products, trading them around the world. The company was branching out across the globe and had agents and licensees operating in more than 100 countries. From 1983 onward, Siegfried focused on the development and production of active pharmaceutical ingredients and drugs for the research-based pharmaceutical industry.
From 2010, the company grew to critical size thanks to acquisitions, and it reached sales of one-billion Swiss Francs for the first time in 2021. After shifting its focus to contract manufacturing, Siegfried’s global network also changed. The technology at the different locations is coordinated in such a way that individual production steps can be completed at whichever location can achieve the best possible quality at the lowest possible cost.
Today, Siegfried operates at 13 locations in seven countries on three continents.
Nine of these have been acquired since 2012. In 2020, Siegfried took over two pharmaceutical production facilities from Novartis in Spain: Barberà del Vallès and El Masnou. In 2022, Siegfried broke ground on a new production facility in the German town of Minden. With a total investment of 100 million USD this was largest investment project in the company’s history.
The company supplies approximately 200 out of 1500 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) approved by the FDA and serves more than 500 customers globally. Up to one billion people come in contact with Siegfried products every year, and over 100 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines were manufactured by Siegfried.
The graph below shows revenue growth since 2005, and beyond 2025, as analysts expect this positive momentum to continue in the years ahead.
Source: Bloomberg
None of the information provided should be considered as a recommendation or an incitement to buy or sell, and under no circumstances as management advice.
At the time of writing, MW GESTION ACTIONS EUROPE holds the following listed securities: Siegfried Holding for 2% of its assets.