Gilles became CEO of Aceto in July 2019 and brings more than 30 years of global industry leadership experience in life sciences, fine chemicals, and research chemicals to Aceto.

Prior to joining Aceto, he most recently served as Head of Bioscience at Lonza. Previously, he had held numerous positions of increasing responsibility at Sigma Aldrich during his nearly 30 years there, including his role as Executive Vice President and President of the Sigma Aldrich Fine Chemicals Commercial Unit.

Gilles earned a master’s degree in organic chemistry from the Ecole Supérieure de Chimie Industrielle de Lyon and the advanced management program from the Harvard Business School in Boston.

Customers need choice

Highlights from our discussion with Gilles Cottier, CEO of Aceto.

Gilles Cottier: “In our view, western options for CDMO capacity are highly constrained.  This is not good for our customers, and this situation is driving much of our $25 million investments in our facilities in 2022.”

Acquire and aspire!

In the past 2 years, Aceto has managed to complete no fewer than seven acquisitions. This would have been a great accomplishment under any circumstances but, particularly under the challenging environment created by the COVID pandemic, this has been an astounding achievement.

“If you had told me three years ago that Aceto would acquire and integrate seven acquisitions over two years I would have said you are crazy,” exclaims Gilles. “Now, let’s throw in a pandemic to make it even more interesting!” 

Gilles is pleased with the efforts that the legacy Aceto team and the teams of the acquisitions have taken to integrate so many companies, so quickly.  While any acquisition has challenges along the way, he believes that Aceto has developed “a bit of an acquisition/integration machine”.  Experiences gained over the past two years have given Aceto a sense for where the emphasis needs to be to ensure minimal customer disruption, and how to minimise activities that don’t deliver value.

Customers need choice

While the discussions surrounding on-shore manufacturing and domestic sourcing continue to evolve, Gilles believes that the pharma supply chain is already too global for companies to accomplish complete on-shoring. The answer, in his view, lies in giving customers more choice when choosing their supply chains. On-shore and off-shore solutions can both come with their own advantages and disadvantages, but customers should have the chance to balance those options, and to make sourcing decisions that are most in their interest.

In fact, this approach to ‘customer choice’ shaped the company’s recent acquisition strategy. Most of the companies acquired had a western footprint, meaning that Aceto can now offer solutions that range from captive western production to outsourced solutions in the east.

Aceto’s operations span ten countries including the US, Canada, China, India, France, Germany, Netherlands, and Singapore. The recent acquisitions extend the company’s GMP manufacturing footprint in  North America, Europe and India, and they enable Aceto to offer its customers more western sources of materials.

The acquisitions also enhance Aceto’s capabilities in R&D. “Two years ago, we had no R&D resources at Aceto,” says Gilles. “With these acquisitions, we now have a global team of 50 R&D scientists.”

Rubust supply chains

While COVID was sidely blamed for interrupting global supply chains, Aceto navigated these choppy waters by pivoting to other suppliers, or capitalising on strong relationships with suppliers to ensure that its orders were prioritised. 

Clearly, the company could not avoid the same supply chain latency issues that impacted every industry in the world but, while lead times increased, Gilles is proud to say that Aceto’s on-time rate to customers has actually improved over the past two years, in large part due to the strong intimacy the company has with its customers and suppliers.

Echoing a great many other voices at DCAT Week 2022 who have missed the value of face-to-face interactons over the past couple of years, Gilles added that, “Probably we were most impacted by our inability to visit some of our vendor partners…  face to face meetings are critical to deliver the innovation that our customers are looking for.“ 

DCAT Week is the premier global event held annually in New York City for companies engaged in the Bio/Pharmaceutical manufacturing value chain. It is hosted by the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association (DCAT), a not-for-profit, corporate member-supported, and volunteer-led global business development association for companies engaged in the Bio/Pharmaceutical manufacturing value chain. Learn more at