Fujifilm Corporation is investing 3.2 billion Japanese yen ($28 million) in its biopharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing sites in the US and the UK.

The company is investing approximately 2.2 billion yen ($19 million) in a GMP facility dedicated to the production of monoclonal antibodies at the Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies site in College Station, Texas. The company is also investing approximately 1 billion yen ($8 million) at its Wilton Center site in Redcar, UK to expand the floor area of the development site of production processes for antibodies and install an additional facility. The new investment will expand the company’s existing process development laboratories for monoclonal antibodies. From fall 2018 onward, the company plans to ramp up operations at the new facilities for process development and manufacturing iof  antibodies and accept orders. 

The company is also installing three single-use 2,000-liter mammalian cell-culture tanks, scheduled to begin operation in early 2018, at its cGMP-compliant production facility that was recently completed at its Texas site and recently opened new cell-culture process development laboratories in Wilton Center, Teesside, UK, September 2017.

The three new single-use mammalian cell-culture tanks will make for a total of six tanks at the Texas facility. In addition, the company will be expanding the floor area of its process development site in the UK to nearly double the existing space of approximately 930 square meters while also expanding the range of equipment with high-throughput technologies, including fully automated bioreactors and chromatography systems. The company expects total cumulative investment in its platform for process development and manufacturing of monoclonal antibodies to reach approximately 17.2 billion yen ($151 million).

At the Texas site, the new production block has space for expansion up to a maximum of 12 cell-culture tanks, according to Fujifilm.

Fujifilm is targeting sales of 100 billion yen ($879 million) in its CDMO business by the fiscal year ending March 2024.

Source: Fujifilm Corporation