Amgen earmarks $200m for new Singapore plant
pharmafile | January 18, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â Amgen, Merck, SingaporeÂ
Amgen has unveiled plans to construct a new manufacturing plant in Singapore, its first production facility in Asia.
The biotechnology major says it will invest around $200 million over the next few years into the facility, which is located in the Tuas Biomedical Park area of Singapore and will expand its manufacturing capacity for monoclonal antibodies.
Madhu Balachandran, head of operations at Amgen, said the new facility forms “part of our global expansion strategy”, and will make both clinical and commercial products.
Singapore is “an ideal location to further our manufacturing efforts based on its rich talent pool and friendly business environment”, he added.
Construction is expected to begin in the next few months, and Amgen says it is currently in discussion with local universities to recruit workers for a number of positions in manufacturing and quality posts.
Singapore has benefited from a series of large-scale investment programmes by big pharma companies over the last few years. For example, Novartis said last November it plans to construct a $500m facility in Tuas for biologics manufacturing, while Merck & Co said in 2011 it planned to spend $1 billion on manufacturing and R&D capacity there over the following 10 years.
The decision to invest in Singapore comes as Amgen has been revamping its manufacturing network, for example by closing down a manufacturing facility in Colorado, US – thanks to declining sales of its red blood cell stimulating drugs Epogen (epoetin alfa) and Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa) – and the sale of a biologics fill-and-finish plant in Ireland to Pfizer.
– Meanwhile Amgen has taken out a non-exclusive license to DSM‘s XD cell line technology, which is designed to increase production yields for recombinant proteins and monoclonal antibodies as well as reducing costs. DSM has suggested that the technology can boost production titres by as much as 10 times compared to current approaches.
Phil Taylor
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