Oxford Properties Group acquires Resilience site for $125m

Oxford will acquire National Resilience’s manufacturing facility in Marlborough, Massachusetts and then lease the property back to the CDMO.

Global real estate investor Oxford Properties Group (Oxford) says the purchase and lease back of the 120,000 square-foot biomanufacturing facility from and to contract development manufacturing organization (CDMO) Resilience will expand its North American footprint while raising proceeds for the CDMO.

“This is a financing transaction that has no impact to operations. Resilience has sold the real estate of the site in Marlborough, Massachusetts, while keeping full control over the operations of the site. The leaseback is a very long-term lease. This provides a low cost of capital financing to Resilience,” Rahul Singhvi, CEO of Resilience, told BioProcess Insider.

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The facility, which is close to completion, will be leased to Resilience for up to 30 years and the firm will use the site to carry out its day-to-day business operations. Once fully operational, the Marlborough plant – around 34 miles from Boston – will be Resilience’s flagship site in the US and  has been designed to be compatible with various modality manufacturing capabilities. The site includes production suites, offices, and warehouse space.

The acquisition takes Oxford’s North American portfolio to 1.4 million square feet (775,000 square feet in the Boston area) and the company says the purchase reinforces its dedication to the life sciences space.

“We continue to develop a robust expertise on the real estate needs of biomanufacturing and our footprint in this space is a key pillar of our investment strategy to build a global life sciences business of scale,” said Chad Remis, executive vice president, North America at Oxford.

“GMP facilities are unique, highly-technical assets and represent a segment of the life sciences market in which we have intentionally set out to become a market leader. Today’s acquisition strengthens our growing relationship with Resilience, and adds another state-of-the-art, income generating asset to our North American platform.”

Rapid Resilience

Singhvi did not rule out that the CDMO could carry out this option elsewhere if the decision came “under the right circumstances,” and added that “the timing of the transaction is driven by and is aligned with the facility construction completion.”

The CDMO has grown quickly through various investments since it entered the biopharma space in November 2020 with $800 million in its pocket to provide ‘new, better, and faster ways’ to advance cell and gene therapies.

In February 2021, the company then took over the Allston facility in Boston, Massachusetts from Sanofi-Genzyme, adding 310,000 square-foot of mainly biologics space and around 250 staff.

Moreover, a 136,000 square-foot facility in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada was also added through the quiet acquisition of CDMO assets from Therapure Biopharma. And in April 2021, Resilience acquired Ology Bioservices and bagged itself a facility in Florida.

Last month, Resilience signed a deal with its investor Mubadala Investment Company PJSC to establish a secure supply chain and will construct a facility in Abu Dhabi, UAE.