Amarin Technologies operates as a pharmaceutical CDMO with an out-licensing strategy in one of the more challenging operating environments in the world, Argentina. For potential partners evaluating a CDMO for transdermal development, licensing, or commercial supply agreements, the Argentine context is either a concern or, on closer examination, evidence of something unusual: a company that has consistently executed at international standards while absorbing macroeconomic conditions that eliminated most of its local competition.

This piece, written by Sergio Lucero, Director and CEO of Amarin Technologies, addresses the double challenge directly, because international partners deserve a clear and honest account of where Amarin operates and what it has built despite that context.

The Pharma Industry Challenge: What Every CDMO Already Faces

The pharmaceutical industry is structurally demanding regardless of geography. Development timelines are long. Regulatory requirements are exacting. Clinical studies are expensive and uncertain. Sales authorizations require years of investment before a single unit reaches a patient. This is the baseline complexity that every serious pharmaceutical company, and every CDMO that serves them, accepts as the cost of operating in this sector.

At Amarin, we do not have the option of using Argentina’s economic complexity as an excuse for failing to meet these baseline standards. Our clients are in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. They audit our facilities under German, US, and local regulatory standards. They require delivery reliability, quality consistency, and technical depth that are indistinguishable from what they would expect from a European or North American CDMO. This is not aspirational language, it is the precondition for the commercial relationships we have maintained and grown over two decades.

The Argentine Context: A Second Layer of Complexity

For the benefit of partners who may not be fully familiar with Argentina’s economic history, a factual summary of the last 20 years is relevant:

• November 30, 2001: the Argentine government imposed a near total restriction on bank account withdrawals, known as the ‘corralito.’ Within weeks, the sitting president resigned, and Argentina cycled through five presidents between December 20, 2001, and January 1, 2002.
• 2002: poverty reached 55% of the population; unemployment reached 22%; GDP contracted by 30%; sovereign risk exceeded 5,000 basis points.
• GDP trajectory: Argentina’s GDP in 2001 was USD 300,421 million. By 2020, it had grown to USD 389,064 million, a 30% increase over twenty years, in nominal dollar terms. For context: global GDP roughly doubled in the same period.
• Public debt: from USD 144,277 million (48% of GDP) in 2001 to USD 400,459 million (103% of GDP) in 2020.
• Accumulated inflation over the past 20 years: 10,197%. Annual inflation in 2022 was approximately 98%.

This is the macroeconomic environment in which Amarin’s team has built its technology, its infrastructure, and its international commercial relationships. It is also, candidly, one of the reasons we believe the credibility of what we have built is stronger than it might appear on paper.

Amarin’s Strategic Response: A 20-Year Track Record

The evening of November 30, 2001, the same night Argentina’s banking system collapsed, Sergio Lucero was in a law firm completing the Management Buyout of Amarin from its then British owners, supported by the company’s Argentine management team. What followed over the next two decades was not a story of surviving despite Argentina’s context. It was a story of building in spite of it, consistently and at international standards.

Amarin Technologies: Key Milestones (2001–Present)

The Out-Licensing Strategy and What It Means for CDMO Partners

Amarin’s out-licensing strategy is built around transdermal products that have demonstrated commercial viability in demanding regulatory markets. The company currently manufactures and supplies Rivastigmine TDS, Buprenorphine TDS, and Fentanyl TDS to partners in Latin America and has presence in the United States, and Europe. These are not emerging or unproven molecules, they are established transdermal therapies with documented clinical profiles and active generic markets.

The partnership model Amarin offers is built around three core competitive factors:

• Technical complementarity: Amarin provides transdermal formulation development, GMP manufacturing, regulatory support, and analytical capabilities that complement the commercial and distribution strengths of its partners. Partners gain a fully operational transdermal pipeline without building the internal infrastructure to develop and manufacture patches themselves.
• Flexibility: as a company that has operated for 20 years under conditions of structural uncertainty, Amarin has developed organizational flexibility that larger CDMOs, whose processes were designed for stable, high-volume environments, often cannot match. This translates into responsiveness, adaptability in project scope, and a willingness to engage with development programs that do not meet the minimum volume thresholds of larger organizations.
• Human capital as competitive advantage: ‘Our greatest asset and advantage is Human Capital. This remains intact while supporting and ensuring the achievement of the company’s objectives,’ Lucero notes. In an industry where institutional knowledge about specific molecules, regulatory dossiers, and manufacturing processes is irreplaceable, the continuity of Amarin’s technical team is a concrete deliverable for partners who need reliability across multi-year development and supply programs.

For pharmaceutical companies evaluating CDMO partners for transdermal out-licensing, the request is direct: evaluate our capabilities, not the context of Argentina. The track record presented here is the evidence base for that evaluation.