SAFC Commercial, the business unit of Sigma-Aldrich providing products and services for use in regulated pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical applications, has validated its recently expanded facility in Irvine, Scotland, which now features dry-powder cell-culture media. The Irvine expansion, announced in March 2013, was initiated as part of a five-year capital investment plan. Now fully validated, the site acts as the European counterpart to the company’s Lenexa, Kansas, Center of Excellence for cell-culture media manufacture and supply in the US.

The dry-powder media manufacturing capabilities added to the Irvine site are redundant to the manufacturing processes, technology, and materials used at the Lenexa facility to ensure reproducible and comparable high-quality product across both sites. SAFC's new dry-powder milling and blending capabilities in Irvine are animal component-free and complementary to the liquid cell-culture media, buffers, and reagents that were already featured at the site.

The site expansion concentrated on creating shorter lead times, improving flexibility, and giving customers access to real-time information. Efficiencies in throughput and responsiveness were achieved by decoupling manufacturing processes and focusing on supply logistics while technologies for in-line monitoring and a process intelligence data historian system deliver transparency. Storage capacity was also expanded, creating new material and finished-goods warehousing space.

In addition to Irvine, SAFC has cell-culture media manufacturing sites in Lenexa, Kansas and St. Louis, Missouri.

Source: Sigma-Aldrich