“One day lost during a clinical phase is one day of peak sales that is lost — always.”
Nicolas Ragot, Chief Executive Officer of Delpharm, brings over three decades of pharmaceutical manufacturing expertise, having started his career as a process engineer at Eli Lilly before progressing through technical and leadership roles at Procter & Gamble Pharma and GSK. He joined Delpharm in 2018 as Chief Operating Officer and assumed the CEO role in 2024.
In this episode of the PharmaSource podcast, Nicolas explains why supply reliability, digital standardization, and long-term partnership thinking are the strategic pillars that allow Delpharm to differentiate in an increasingly consolidated CDMO market — and why time to market is the single most important criterion any biotech should use when selecting a manufacturing partner.
Supply Reliability as the Non-Negotiable Foundation
When asked about Delpharm’s core differentiators for the next five years, Nicolas stresses that the fundamental obligation of any drug product CDMO is getting medicines to patients. Everything else is built on top of that baseline.
“The number one differentiator is supply reliability. We need to bring the products to the patients.”
Delpharm’s end-to-end model, taking products from early-stage development through to commercial manufacturing, is designed to deliver continuity of service and reduce handoff risk for sponsors. Nicolas frames this as an operational philosophy embedded in day-to-day decisions.
What sets Delpharm apart operationally, he adds, is its track record of executing acquisitions without disrupting production. When integrating new sites, the company has had to migrate over 100 legacy IT systems — ERP, LIMS, CAPA, HR, payroll — into its own infrastructure, all while maintaining manufacturing output.
“The last time we did this, the site achieved a record year in its entire 30-year history. That is something we are quite proud of.”
Digitalization Built for Consistency, Not Just Compliance
The conversation around pharma manufacturing digitalization often centers on data integrity as a regulatory obligation. Nicolas acknowledges that foundation but pivots quickly to the more strategically relevant question: what are you actually doing with the data once it’s reliable?
“The next step is, what do you actually do with the data. This is where I believe we can bring real value to our customers.”
Delpharm’s digitalization strategy is built around a core models approach — standardizing how data is captured, structured, and surfaced across all 18 manufacturing sites. The goal is to ensure that a sponsor working with a Delpharm facility in France receives the same reporting formats, KPI dashboards, and quality visibility as one working with a Delpharm facility elsewhere.
This matters because many large CDMOs operate as loose federations of acquired sites, each with distinct ways of working. Nicolas describes how Delpharm actively counters this tendency:
“Our clients come to large CDMOs like us so that they are not getting things from different sites as if they were different CDMOs. Our digitization is around putting core models so that we diminish the cost and bring value to our customers — and give them the same way of working, whatever the site.”
The practical benefit for sponsors is reduced friction during scale-up or multi-site sourcing. Instead of managing heterogeneous data formats across facilities, they interact with a single operating model.
Building Resilient Supply Chains Through Dual Sourcing
Post-COVID supply chain fragility has reshaped how CDMOs and sponsors think about risk. For Delpharm, the response has been structural rather than reactive: investing in redundant capabilities across its site network and developing certified backup suppliers for key materials.
Nicolas explains that Delpharm is able to register products across multiple sites with regulatory approval from sponsors, allowing production to shift between facilities in response to volume volatility, capacity constraints, or supplier disruptions.
“We can dual source by registering products on two sites. Then we can shift production from one site to another — to make room for another client, or to increase production and react quickly to volume volatility.”
The architecture extends beyond internal site redundancy. Delpharm maintains primary and secondary supplier relationships for critical raw materials, a strategy Nicolas credits with insulating the company from the supply disruptions that affected many CDMOs during and after the pandemic.
With 18 manufacturing sites and redundant dose form capabilities across the network, sponsors can, in practice, dual source entirely within Delpharm — maintaining two qualified manufacturing nodes without the complexity of managing separate CDMO relationships.
“It’s a kind of double-edged system. Not only at our suppliers, but also us. We can bring a security of supply.”
Delpharm supplies products to customers operating in 150 countries. Nicolas notes that forecast accuracy varies significantly across geographies, making supply chain flexibility a commercial as well as an operational asset.
Long-Term Partnership: Beyond Transactional Contracting
The CDMO industry is in the middle of a structural shift away from transactional, project-by-project engagement toward something closer to strategic alliance. Nicolas sees this as a prerequisite for delivering real value.
His framework for partnership begins with honest assessment of fit. Not every sponsor’s long-term needs can be met by Delpharm, and he considers it a sign of good faith to acknowledge that upfront rather than overpromise on capabilities or geographies that are not yet in the network.
“Sometimes we cannot fulfill what they want on a long-term view — maybe we don’t have the capacities, maybe we don’t have the geography. That’s fine. But if it is the case, then we take the long view.”
Where Delpharm does have the fit, Nicolas describes the natural evolution of partnerships. Sponsors typically start at a single site, build confidence through consistent execution, and then progressively extend the relationship across the network. He notes that some customers now source products out of eight or nine Delpharm sites.
On commercial structures, Nicolas points to capacity reservation, dual sourcing agreements, and leveraging Delpharm’s consolidated purchasing power with suppliers as tools for co-creating resilient supply chains. The company’s scale — larger than most of its individual sponsor clients — gives it a negotiating position that can be shared.
For sponsors entering new markets, Delpharm’s existing regulatory approvals in so many regions can accelerate market entry, removing the need to separately establish CDMO relationships in unfamiliar regulatory environments.
Growth Strategy: Cautious Expansion with a Clear Horizon
Delpharm’s growth thesis is to continue acquiring manufacturing sites in Europe and North America, expand organically by winning new business at existing facilities, and selectively add dose form capabilities where client demand signals the opportunity.
Nicolas is candid about the pacing. Thirty years of measured expansion have produced the current 18-site footprint, and he has no interest in compromising integration quality by growing faster than the organization can absorb.
“We are a cautious company. We want to grow at a pace that allows us to digest those acquisitions and the ways of working of those new markets.”
Geographically, the immediate priority is consolidating European strength and expanding in North America, where a Canadian presence provides a platform for potential US entry. South America and Asia are acknowledged as longer-term ambitions, not near-term commitments.
Technologically, Nicolas highlights blow-fill-seal (BFS) as a capability gap Delpharm is looking to close through acquisition, alongside broader development services as sponsors increasingly seek CDMO partners who can support earlier-stage programs.
On sustainability, Delpharm has validated Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) commitments: a 42% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030, and 25% for Scope 3. Nicolas frames ESG performance as both a commercial requirement — with large pharma clients increasingly embedding sustainability into CDMO selection criteria — and a talent strategy, noting that younger employees are actively seeking employers with credible climate commitments.
What Biotech CEOs Should Actually Look for in a CDMO
Nicolas closes the conversation with a framework for biotech executives navigating CDMO selection. His hierarchy is deliberate, placing operational performance ahead of more easily marketed attributes.
1. Timeline Adherence Above All Else
For any company in active development, time to market is the defining commercial variable. Nicolas is emphatic that this criterion should be weighted most heavily in CDMO selection — and that it can be validated, not just promised.
“Choose a company that respects the timelines. Time to market is essential. It’s a very competitive landscape.”
His suggested due diligence method is to ask to review anonymized project milestone data. A CDMO with genuine on-time delivery performance will be able to show it.
2. Technical Capability
Adherence to timelines is only possible if the CDMO has the technical depth to execute the work. Nicolas places technical capability second because without it, no schedule commitment is credible.
3. Scalability
Development-stage relationships often collapse at commercial launch when a CDMO cannot handle the volume step-up. Nicolas explicitly flags scale-up capacity as a distinct criterion — separate from development capability.
4. GMP and Service Track Record
Regulatory compliance and quality history are baseline qualifiers.
“One day lost during a clinical phase is one day of peak sales that is lost — always.”
The implication is that a CDMO’s ability to protect the clinical timeline is ultimately a commercial decision, not just an operational one. For biotechs investing in late-stage development, the cost of choosing the wrong manufacturing partner is measured in forgone revenue, not just project delays.
