Sandoz
| Sandoz AG
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1886 |
| resolution | 1996 through merger to form Novartis AG |
| Seat | Basel , Switzerland |
| Number of employees | 49,882 (1995) |
| sales | 15.244 billion CHF (1995) |
| Branch | Chemicals and pharmaceuticals |
| Sandoz International GmbH
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| legal form | GmbH |
| Seat | Holzkirchen (Upper Bavaria) |
| Website | sandoz.com |
Sandoz is a subgroup of the Novartis pharmaceutical company based in Holzkirchen (Upper Bavaria), which bundles the Novartis Group's entire generics activities.
history
The company was founded in 1886 by Alfred Kern and Edouard Sandoz in Basel (Switzerland) as an aniline factory (= basic material for paint production). As early as 1895, the first pharmaceutical substance called antipyrine to lower fever was produced. Sandoz entered pharmaceutical research in 1917 when Arthur Stoll was hired and expanded over the following decades to the end of the 1960s with up to 40 subsidiaries worldwide.
In 1995, the specialty chemicals division became an independent company under the name Clariant AG with headquarters in Muttenz . On December 20, 1996, Sandoz merged with Ciba-Geigy . The new group was given the name Novartis. The brand name Sandoz was then only used in the pharmaceutical business for over-the-counter drugs such as B. Calcium-Sandoz present.
In its last financial year as an independent company, Sandoz AG achieved sales of 15.244 billion Swiss francs in 1995 with 49,882 employees. Of this, around 7.1 billion francs went to pharmaceuticals, 2.3 billion francs to industry and chemistry, 2.2 billion francs to agribusiness and 3.7 billion francs to nutrition and other areas. According to Novartis' 2016 Annual Report, the Sandoz division had a sales share of 21% of total Novartis sales in 2016, which corresponds to 10.1 billion US dollars.
Newer development
The former company name Sandoz was reactivated in May 2003 with the merger of the generics companies of the parent company Novartis with different names worldwide under the uniform brand name Sandoz with headquarters in Vienna . In addition to the name, the company logo used before the merger was also adopted. In February 2005, Novartis took over Hexal AG and Eon Labs. The incorporation in Sandoz created the second largest generics group worldwide and the largest on the German market with annual sales of 7.6 billion US dollars (2008) and over 23,000 employees in 130 countries. The company headquarters has been in Holzkirchen since 2005 . The Swiss administrative headquarters of Sandoz is in Rotkreuz ZG in the municipality of Risch in the canton of Zug .
In November 2018 it was announced that Novartis plans to convert Sandoz into an independent unit over the next two years. In March 2019 it was announced that the CEO Richard Francis had resigned for personal reasons and that Francesco Balestrieri, the European head of Sandoz, had taken over the management on an interim basis .
Sandoz Austria
In Kundl in the Tyrolean Lower Inn Valley is the headquarters of the Austrian Sandoz GmbH on the site of the former Kundler brewery . Biochemie GmbH started producing penicillin here in 1946 with six employees .
In 1964, the company was incorporated into the Swiss Novartis Group - at that time still Sandoz AG . In 2003, Novartis merged its generics activities under the reintroduced name Sandoz - Biochemie GmbH became Sandoz GmbH.
Today the Austrian company Sandoz GmbH develops and produces generic, patent-free medicines as well as a wide range of pharmaceutical and biotechnological active ingredients. The company is one of the largest manufacturers of antibiotics. With the active ingredients from the Austrian company Sandoz, one billion patients can be treated against bacterial infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, otitis media or inflammation of the tonsils and bronchi every year. Around 190 million drug packs leave the Kundl plant every year and are used in over a hundred countries.
At the end of 2009, Sandoz GmbH had a total of 2,866 employees. In the last eight years alone, the number of employees has increased by around a hundred each year. In 2013 there were already 3,657 employees with an academic share of over twenty percent.
More than 610 employees work in research and development. Another focus is on the development of generics that are difficult to manufacture. These special products are based on special formulations such as transdermal patches, implants and sustained- release tablets.
Biotechnological drugs have been developed and produced in the two Tyrolean locations of Kundl and Schaftenau for many decades. That is why they are important competence centers within the Sandoz and Novartis Group. They produce active ingredients not only for their own needs, but also for other pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Decades of experience in the field of biotechnology form the basis for the new business field of biosimilars.
Another location in Austria is EBEWE in Unterach am Attersee in Upper Austria.
Major Sandoz fire in Schweizerhalle on November 1, 1986
On November 1, 1986, a major fire broke out in a warehouse of what was then Sandoz in Schweizerhalle, which contained 1,350 tons of chemicals . The thick smoke, the stench and the unknown composition of the combustion gases prompted the authorities in the neighboring communities to alert the population early in the morning with a general siren alarm, and a curfew of several hours was imposed. People did not suffer any acute harm, with the exception of three people with pre-existing asthma who required hospitalization. However, through the extinguishing water, the toxins got into the Rhine , where they caused great fish deaths .
On November 11, 1986, the analysis of water samples proved that at the same time as the pollution of the Rhine by the contaminated fire-fighting water from the Sandoz area, 400 kg of atrazine , a herbicide , had been discharged into the Rhine by the neighboring chemical company Ciba-Geigy .
The official investigation report came to the conclusion (only “on the basis of theoretical considerations”) that when pallets were packed with Berlin blue, the incorrect handling of a hot air blower led to a glowing hearth, which could be the cause. However, subsequent legal proceedings did not result in a conviction. Today the plant belongs to Clariant.
Sandoz has not completely cleared the fire place in Schweizerhalle. She left a landfill. This contains pollutants from the fire of November 1, 1986. This landfill still endangers a neighboring drinking water well of the Muttenz community today, 25 years after the fire. More fire pollutants enter the groundwater than the binding agreements between Sandoz and the authorities in 1989/90. The pharmaceutical company Novartis as legal successor to Sandoz and the environmental authorities of the canton of Basel-Landschaft accept this (as of 2010).
To commemorate the catastrophe, there is a plastic market table by Bettina Eichin in the cloister of Basel Minster .
Possibly shipping thiopental to the US for use in executions
As the screen time could research on 9 February 2011 to wholesale pharmacy in October 2010 the British Archimedes about 525 grams of the anesthetic thiopental worth about 27,560 euros in the United States have provided that in the Austrian branch of Sandoz made has been. The buyer of the narcotic is said to be the California State Prison San Quentin , where the drug has been used since 2010 to anesthetize death row inmates before the actual execution injection. Immediately after the incident became known, the Austrian Minister of Health Alois Stöger asked Sandoz to prevent and exclude any improper use of the drugs produced. Sandoz stated it could neither confirm nor exclude the use. Archimedes is definitely not a customer and is solely responsible for compliance with a marketing permit in Great Britain. Sandoz markets injectable thiopental, which is classified as an essential drug by the WHO , in 50 countries worldwide, but not in the USA and Great Britain.
Web links
- Sandoz website
- Walter Dettwiler: Sandoz. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
- Article on the "Schweizerhalle" landfill
- History of bio chemistry in Kundl by Ernst Brandl
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry of the former "Sandoz AG" in the commercial register of the Canton of Basel-Stadt ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ a b c Case Studies on Innovation Management, page 273, The Novartis Mega Merger
- ↑ Anna Bálint: clareant Clariant. The beginnings of a specialty chemicals company . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2011, ISBN 978-3-593-39375-9 .
- ↑ Anna Bálint: clareant Clariant. The beginnings of a specialty chemicals company . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt am Main / New York 2012, ISBN 978-3-593-39374-2 .
- ↑ Novartis Annual Report 2016. (PDF) Retrieved June 15, 2017 .
- ↑ Novartis bundles business units in Rotkreuz , Neue Luzerner Zeitung, June 14, 2013
- ↑ Holger Alich: The Novartis boss let the bomb burst in a small group. In: bazonline.ch. November 16, 2018, accessed November 16, 2018 .
- ↑ Francesco Balestrieri becomes head of the Novartis subsidiary Sandoz. In: handelszeitung.ch . March 14, 2019, accessed March 14, 2019 .
- ^ Sandoz GmbH ( Memento from October 9, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). In: novartis.at. Retrieved September 22, 2014.
- ↑ Image brochure from Novartis Austria ( Memento from August 25, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). May 20, 2014, accessed September 22, 2014.
- ^ AK Tirol - Tiroler Arbeiterzeitung, September 2014, p. 12
- ↑ Walter Reinhard: 25 years of the SANDOZ catastrophe on the Rhine - Effects on water protection , November 23, 2011, accessed on October 31, 2016.
- ↑ We should wake up and think . In: Der Spiegel . No. 47 , 1986 ( online ).
- ↑ Der Spiegel 47/1986 of November 17, 1986, pages 138 to 147
- ↑ Martin Forter: Wrong game. The environmental sins of Basel chemistry before and after “Schweizerhalle”. Chronos Verl., Zurich, 2010. ISBN 978-3-0340-1007-8
- ↑ derStandard.at: Execution equipment exported to the USA
- ↑ Nachrichten.at: US executions: Toxic substance from Tyrol
