Dive Brief:
- After six years of development, Shire officially opened a new manufacturing facility in Stanton Springs, Georgia, with company officials cutting the ribbon late last week.
- In June, the Georgia facility gained Food and Drug Administration approval to begin shipping to customers immunoglobulin plasma-derived therapy produced there.
- Shire plans to submit an application to the FDA seeking approval for manufacturing of a second product, an albumin therapy, "in the near future."
Dive Insight:
Shire's Georgia manufacturing plant now covers over a million square feet, putting it in the ranks of the world's largest biotech manufacturing sites.
Once fully open, the site will employ about 1,500 people. That suggests Shire plans to hire about 600 more staff in the coming years, as a company spokesperson confirmed the Georgia facility houses more than 900 full-time and contract employees.
At full capacity, the plant will add nearly a third more capacity to Shire's internal plasma manufacturing network. Shire filed for FDA approval to produce Gammagard Liquid there last December and some commercial production is already under way.
The plans for the Stanton Springs began with Baxter and its spinoff Baxalta, which Shire purchased in January 2016.
While a number of biologics production sites have been sold off as part of the post-Baxalta restructuring, this project has remained a focus for specialist plasma manufacturing. And now, it will soon belong to Japanese Takeda, which agreed to buy Shire for $62 billion earlier this year.
Immunology is a core area for Shire, which grew year-over-year revenue from the segment by 13% during the second quarter. Immunoglobulin therapies made up the lion's share of immunology sales. In September, the biotech acquired Sanaplasma AG, adding 14 new plasma collection sites in Hungary and the Czech Republic to its network.