DCAT Week 2025: Expanding Sterile Injectables Capacity

Fresh off a $25 million investment announced for the Halo Pharma facility in Whippany, NJ, on March 10, 2025, Noramco Group Chief Executive Lee Karras spoke with Pharmaceutical Technology® on the first day of the 2025 Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association (DCAT) Week on March 17.

The purpose of the investment at the New Jersey site, as Karras detailed in the interview, is to establish sterile injectable manufacturing capabilities, namely ready-to-use syringe, cartridge, and vial filling, to address critical capacity shortages in the injectable supply chain in the United States.

“We have reconfigured some of the plant space to accommodate a commercial, aseptic filling line for vial, syringes, and cartridges,” Karras says in the interview. “That line has been delivered, and we're going through the construction and installation process that will take us into early next year to be ready to produce products. This line represents an investment by The Noramco Group to alleviate products that are on drug shortage [lists] but also work on innovator products as well. So, we're not only going to do clinical manufacturing for NCE [new chemical entity] products, but we're also going to do biologics and small molecules. We're going to do commercial manufacturing domestically, obviously out of New Jersey, to supply the [United States] market, but also have our eyes set on more global regulatory approvals to ship outside of the US.”

DCAT Week is happening March 17–20, 2025 in New York City.

Click the video above to watch the full interview.

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About the speaker

Lee Karras, Noramco Group Chief Executive

Mr. Karras joined Noramco in April 2020, as Group Chief Executive. He is responsible for the Noramco Group of Companies, including Noramco, Purisys, Extractas Bioscience, and Halo Pharmaceuticals. Mr. Karras previously served as a director at SK Capital and CEO of Halo Pharmaceuticals Inc. Prior to Halo, Lee was President of IBA Molecular North America, a radiopharmaceutical company that provided PET imaging agents for diagnostic imaging. Prior to IBA, Mr. Karras was President and CEO of AAIPharma Services Company, a drug product CDMO, where he led the company’s transition from bankruptcy to a standalone CDMO/Pharma Services business.Prior to AAI, Lee held various positions at Baxter Healthcare and Cook Medical (Cook and Baxter Pharmaceutical Solutions). He served as General Manager and helped build the pharmaceutical services start up into one of the largest sterile injectable pharma services businesses in the world. Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Indiana University Bloomington and a Master of Science in Environmental Science from Indiana University Bloomington School of Public and Environmental Affairs.