On 30 April 2018, the company announced that it would be investing Euros 325 million and creating 400 new jobs over five years in a new biologicals drug substance manufacturing facility on the Industrial Development Authority’s (IDA) greenfield site in Mullagharlin, Dundalk, Co. Louth, Ireland. The state-of-the-art facility will be built upon the novel approach WuXi Biologics has pioneered deploying multiple single-use bioreactors for commercial biomanufacturing. It is also designed to be able to run continuous bioprocessing, a next generation manufacturing technology to be first implemented globally in this campus. A total of 48,000 L fed-batch and 6,000 L perfusion bioreactor capacity will be installed, representing the world’s largest facility using single-use bioreactors.

On 16 May 2018, WuXi Biologics announced that it was going to build an integrated biologicals development, clinical and commercial manufacturing centre in the city of Shijiazhuang, which is the capital of Hebei province in northern China. The new state-of-the-art biologicals centre will include process development labs, clinical manufacturing facility (MFG9) with 5,000 L bioreactor capacity and commercial manufacturing facility (MFG8) with 48,000 L bioreactor capacity which will be built to meet the current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) standards of China, the European Union and the US.  Besides serving global clients, the new integrated centre will also support the Marketing Authorization Holder (MAH) system in China and address urgent needs for Chinese partners. WuXi Biologics expects the initial phase of the centre to be operational in 2020.

Furthermore, the company announced on 22 May 2018 that it would be investing S$80 million (US$60 million) and hiring approximately 150 employees to establish a state-of-the-art biologicals manufacturing facility in Singapore. This will be the company’s first overseas site in Asia and will be the 10th global drug substance manufacturing facility of WuXi Biologics (MFG10). 

Lastly, on 11 June 2018, WuXi Biologics announced that it would be investing US$60 million and hiring approximately 150 employees to establish a state-of-the-art biologicals clinical and commercial manufacturing facility in Worcester, Massachusetts in the US. This will be the company’s first overseas site in the US and will be the 11th global drug substance manufacturing facility of Wuxi Biologics (MFG11).

A total of approximately 4,500 L bioreactor capacity will be installed with two 2,000 L traditional fed-batch and one 500 L perfusion-based continuous processing in each of the Singapore and US facility.

Both the Singapore and US facilities will be able to handle both clinical and small volume commercial production. An early-stage bioprocess development lab will also be included.

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