Dive Brief:
- Fujifilm Holdings Corp. opened an expanded drug manufacturing plant in the U.K. earlier this week, completing the latest step in its journey toward a stronger foothold in the pharmaceutical industry.
- The 10,000-square-foot facility, which includes a mammalian cell culture center of excellence, is now up and running in Teesside, England — just a stone's throw from away from another of the Japanese's company's production sites in Billingham.
- Fujifilm's Diosynth Biotechnologies business paid JPY 1 billion ($9 million) for the new facility, and also received funding from the U.K.'s Regional Growth Fund, which aims to foster private sector investment and local economic growth.
Dive Insight:
Of the various industries Fujifilm operates within, pharma appears to be a priority. Its M&A activities reflect that: the company acquired human cell manufacturer Cellular Dynamics International for upwards of $300 million in 2015, and last year it inked a $60 million deal with Merck & Co. to establish a 20,000-square-foot microbial biologics facility.
Perhaps most noteworthy, however, was when Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies' announced in April plans to invest JPY 14 billion ($130M USD) in manufacturing expansions. Those expansions included the 10,000-square-foot plant in the U.K. and a roughly $120 million addition of bioreactors at a site in Texas.
The U.K. expansion further supports the company's trademarked monoclonal antibody (mAb) platform, named Saturn, which offers manufacturing services for drugmakers focused on cell culture-based therapies.
"These laboratories are designed to incorporate the latest high-throughput technologies, including fully automated high throughput bioreactors and chromatography systems," Andy Topping, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies' chief scientific officer, said in a Sept. 12 statement.
The company also highlighted that these latest developments should strengthen its position in the rapidly evolving pharma manufacturing space.
"The Saturn Process Development Laboratories are a huge differentiator in the cell culture and monoclonal antibody process development space," said Paul Found, COO, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies UK sites.