WuXi Biologics has completed the weather-tight seal of its biologics drug substance manufacturing facility on the Dundalk Campus in Ireland, symbolising the start of the company’s global biomanufacturing network.
Representing one of the world’s largest facilities using single-use bioreactors, this “Facility of the Future” commenced construction in February 2019 and completed the weather-tight seal of its main facility in December 2019, with 5,500 tonnes of structural steel and 8,000 sqm of wall cladding having been used so far.
The facility is designed to adopt both large scale commercial manufacturing using disposable bioreactors and next-generation continuous bioprocessing manufacturing technology and will have a total bioreactor capacity of 6,000 litres perfusion (MFG6) and 48,000 litres fed-batch (MFG7) after full completion.
“We are proud of achieving this great milestone 10 months after initiating the facility construction of our first global site in Europe, which is another testament of ‘WuXi Bio Speed’ implemented outside of China for the first time. Construction of our US facility will also begin soon as well.” said Dr Chris Chen, CEO of WuXi Biologics. “As a global company, we are building capabilities and capacities in the US, Europe and China to serve our clients and to benefit patients worldwide.”