Actavis announced that it has agreed to purchase Floxapen from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) for Europe. Actavis will take over the distribution of the product in coming weeks.

Floxapen capsules, syrup and injection contain the active ingredient flucloxacillin, which is used to treat infections affecting the skin and soft tissue, bone infections, urinary tract infections, respiratory tract infections, meningitis and blood poisoning. Flucloxacillin is also sometimes used to prevent infections during major operations such as bone or heart surgery.

Floxapen has been on the market since early 1970s and has experienced consistent sales growth since then. Sales are expected to be around EUR12.0 million for full year 2007.

Floxapen is currently, available in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Luxemburg, Malta, Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and the UK. The product is sold under the Staphylex trademark in Germany. GSK will act as the distributor in the markets where Actavis does not have presence until April 2008.

Sigurdur Oli Olafsson, Deputy CEO said, "While Actavis has established one of the strongest pipelines in the generic industry, a core component of our growth strategy is to seek opportunistic acquisitions that add strong products with market leading positions to our portfolio. Floxapen does exactly that and provides us with another high turnover product that we can sell across multiple markets."