Strong growth has been seen across all of the Penn services since the beginning of this financial year, with overall sales for the first 6 months of £7.5m, a 15% increase over the previous year. Key outsourced services of £5.75m, reflects a 28% increase based on the same period the previous year. A key driver of recent growth is the continued increase in demand for early stage pharmaceutical development services. In order to address this, Penn has created a dedicated team to satisfy the demand for early phase clinical trial supply projects – an area that has remained strong over recent months. In addition, other services such as custom manufacturing, formulation development and analytical stability testing also continued to perform well so that the overall achievement is 32% growth on last year’s sales. Secondary drivers have been, Penn’s strong track record in securing overseas business, which itself has been supplemented by a steady flow of orders for its Qualified Person (QP) consultancy. Craig Rennie, Chairman and Chief Executive at Penn, said: "Since the company was formed in 1979, and particularly in the past six years, we have worked hard to develop our expertise in product development, continuing to invest in facilities and equipment and staff training and development to help keep us at the forefront of pharmaceutical outsourcing. "These results are the culmination of an exciting few months for Penn and together with our recent news of a £1 million investment and expansion programme, it will enable us to increase our staff base and further strengthen our offering." Penn Pharmaceutical Services Ltd is a leading provider of outsourced pharmaceutical development services to the international healthcare industry. The company’s core business expertise includes a fully comprehensive product development service, which consists of formulation and analytical development, clinical trial manufacturing, packaging and supply management and extensive custom manufacturing capabilities. Penn also offers CMC Consultancy and Qualified Person (QP) Services.