Plant will focus on commercial mammalian cell culture production.
Lonza and Bio*One Capital broke ground for a mammalian cell culture manufacturing facility at Tuas Biomedical Park in Singapore. This is the second large-scale mammalian production plant in the city state.
According to Stephan Kutzer, chairman of Lonza Biologics Tuas, “the facility will operate with cutting-edge technology and a skilled labor force and will be able to manufacture products with a wide array of processes, yields, and technologies. This second Lonza facility in Singapore will meet the needs of a variety of customers and will address the growing global biologics demand.”
The construction of the Lonza Biologics Tuas shell, in the first phase, was initiated last month. The final build-out of the facility, will be completed and become fully operational, at the latest in 2011, in line with customer commitments, notes Kutzer. Depending upon customer request, the capital investment could amount to approximately $350 million. Lonza Biologics Tuas will have up to four mammalian bioreactor trains, each with a capacity of 1,000 up to 20,000 liters and is inclusive of the respective purification units.
