Dive Brief:
- German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim broke ground last week on a $217 million expansion of its manufacturing facility in Fremont, California.
- The upgrade will increase the site's production capacity by one third and will eventually add almost 300 jobs to the existing 500-strong workforce.
- California granted Boehringer two tax credits awards totaling $25.5 million for the build-out.
Dive Insight:
Currently a 300,000 square foot multi-product manufacturing site, the Fremont site will expand to increase Boehringer's capacity and flexibility in producing biologic drugs.
Fremont lies just across San Francisco Bay from Palo Alto and is part of the broader geographic cluster of life sciences firms.
Elsewhere Boehringer Ingelheim opened a new $77 million biopharma manufacturing plant in Shanghai, China in May 2017. This is the only facility using mammalian cell culture technology to be set up by a multinational in China. The company also has biologics manufacturing sites in Vienna, Austria, and Biberach, Germany.
But, as with other big pharma, the drugmaker is also adjusting its manufacturing network, cutting small molecule discovery research and other functions in Ridgefield, Connecticut, and making similar cuts in Milan, Italy.