Croda announces new President of Life Sciences

Croda International Plc, the company that uses smart science to create high performance ingredients and technologies that improve lives, today reinforces its future ambitions in Life Sciences with a new appointment to its Executive Committee.
 
Daniele Piergentili has been appointed President of the Group’s Life Sciences sector. Daniele is an Italian national with extensive international experience having worked in the US, UK, Switzerland and Germany. He has spent the past 20 years working for BASF principally in its pharmaceutical business.  He has been responsible for the unit’s manufacturing and commercial operations, supplying drug delivery platforms such as biologic excipients and adjuvants, and custom synthesis services to the global pharmaceutical industry. Daniele succeeds Nick Challoner who has been appointed Croda’s Chief Scientific Officer.

With a growing portfolio of technologies aligned to global health and crop sustainability trends, this appointment supports Croda’s strategic direction to expand its Life Sciences business as a high value-add solution provider to its pharmaceutical, crop protection and seed enhancement customers. In recent years, Croda has accelerated investment in Life Sciences with organic expansion of its speciality excipients business and the acquisition of adjacent technologies in seed enhancement and drug delivery. Through the acquisition of Avanti Polar Lipids in 2020, it also added proprietary lipid technology to its capabilities in drug delivery systems, which have been instrumental in supporting urgent demand for Covid-19 vaccines. There is also a significant pipeline of emerging opportunities, including mRNA and gene therapy drug and vaccine technologies, made possible by the synergies of this acquisition.

Daniele said “I am very excited to have been asked to lead Croda’s Life Sciences business at such a pivotal time. Life Sciences is now well established as a fast-growth, high-value leg of Croda’s business model and we have strong aspirations to innovate and grow further across both the Health and Crop Care businesses. I look forward to continuing this success story, establishing broad drug delivery platforms for next generation pharmaceuticals and innovating in partnership with our crop science customers to meet their sustainability ambitions.”