Breaking News From Pharma & Bio Ingredients
Lonza To Invest in Biopharma Facility in Singapore
Posted on 2006-12-11 10:06:00
Lonza Group and Singapore's BioOne Capital have formed a joint venture, Lonza Biologics Tuas, to build a large-scale mammalian cell culture facility in Singapore. It will be the second large-scale mammalian manufacturing plant in Singapore, and the third one globally that Lonza has built. Depending on customer requests, the capital investment could reach $350 million.
Lonza Biologics Tuas, located in Tuas Biomedical Park, will have up to four mammalian bioreactor trains, each with a flexible capacity of 1,000 up to 20,000 liters and inclusive of the respective purification units.
The plant is expected to be constructed over two phases. The construction of the Lonza Biologics Tuas shell, in the first phase, will be initiated in February and the groundbreaking ceremony will be celebrated in March. The final build-out of the facility will be completed and become operational at the latest in 2011, in line with customer commitments. When fully completed, Lonza Biologics Tuas will hire approximately 350 people for the operation.
"With this project, Lonza continues to strengthen its leading postion has the global custom manufacturer of biopharmaceuticals entering the fast-growing Asian market," said Stefan Borgas, CEO of Lonza. "The facility will operate with cutting edge technology with a skilled labor force and will be able to manufacture products with a wide array of processes, yields and technologies. It will offer our customers an additional site to complement our existing large scale Portsmouth, NH facility and expand upon our capabilities to serve our clients in this fast-growing market segment."
In a separate announcement, Lonza said it had completed the acquisition of Genentech's mid-scale mammalian biopharmaceutical production plant based in Porriño, Spain. The deal is valued at $150 million. The site employs 310.
Subscribe via RSS
