Catalent breaks ground on $35m controlled-release facility
pharmafile | June 17, 2013 | News story | Manufacturing and Production |Â Â CatalentÂ
Catalent Pharma Solutions has started construction of a new facility at its site in Winchester, Kentucky, that will boost its capacity for controlled-release product manufacturing.
The site is already the main location in Catalent’s network for modified-released and complex oral dose form manufacturing, and will be expanded from 100,000 sq. ft. to almost 180,000 sq. ft. as a result of the new build.
Catalent is earmarking $35 million for the new building, which is due to open in October 2014 and will provide employment for 90 new workers.
Once the first phase of construction is completed it will add around 20,000 sq. ft. of Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) production suites, and 15,000 sq. ft. apiece of warehouse and lab/office space. Another 17,000 sq. ft. of GMP space will be added in a second phase.
Winchester opened in 1992 and focuses on producing tablets, hard and softgel capsules and other formulations for sustained/modified drug substance release, employing around 300 workers at the moment. The facility has launched more than 100 products for Catalent’s pharmaceutical and consumer health customers.
The new unit will allow it to cope with additional technologies brought in-house by Catalent in recent times, according to the firm’s chief executive John Chiminski.
These include fluid bed processing technology – used to make dried, granulated, agglomerated or coated powders – as well as hot melt extrusion systems that provide a rapid and simple way to co-process active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), polymer excipients and plasticisers.
Catalent is also using the new capacity to support its once-step dry coating (OSDRC) OptiDose technology, which can produce pulsatile, bi-layer, multi-core, dividable, delayed release and direct compression tablets in an almost limitless number of shapes and sizes.
OSDRC was originally developed by Japan’s Sanwa Kagaku Kenkyusho, and Catalent licensed rights to the system outside Japan, Korea, China and Taiwan in 2011. It started trials of the technology at Winchester early last year.
“The expanded Winchester facility will provide our customers with enhanced access to custom equipment capabilities and our market-leading controlled release solutions and technologies,” said Steve Havel, general manager of unit.
The Winchester expansion comes on the heels of several other investments Catalent has made in recent months, including a new single-use biomanufacturing facility in Wisconsin which officially opened in April, two new Chinese facilities for softgels and clinical trial supplies and the expansion of its inhaled drug unit in North Carolina.
Phil Taylor
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