MICHAEL QUIRMBACH
Member of Chimica Oggi – Chemistry Today’s Scientific Advisory Board
Siegfried AG, Untere Brühlstrasse 4, CH-4800 ,Zofingen, Switzerland

Dear Readers,
This year I have been given the opportunity to write the final editorial for the last issue of Chemistry Today in 2013. I hope you all had a good and successful 2013 and are looking forward to a prosperous 2014. At this time of the year when we all reflect over the past and are looking forwards to what is ahead of us, I thought it would be interesting to do the same for the Chemical Development and Manufacturing Industry (CDMO) – in particular as it relates to the fine chemicals / drug substance manufacturing. As many of us, I also recently attended CPhI in Frankfurt – once again an impressive and huge industry event with nearly 34’000 attendees from 140 countries and 2’200 exhibitor present. While there, you will realize, that the CDMO industry has significantly changed over the years and the prominent topic is sourcing / production in Asia versus the West – what stays here and what goes abroad. How do major players in the field tackle and respond to the challenge. In my opinion, significant overcapacity exists in the global CDMO market, despite the often cited rising demand by pharmaceutical companies.
When referring to ...