Lonza Breaks Ground on Biologics Manufacturing Facility in Singapore

Singapore (Mar. 29)-The contract manufacturing organization Lonza Group (Basel, Switzerland, www.lonza.com) and Bio*One Capital (Singapore, www.bio1capital.com) broke ground for their large-scale commercial mammalian cell-culture manufacturing facility at Tuas Biomedical Park in Singapore. Bio*One Capital, the investment arm of the Singapore Economic Development Board (www.edg.gov.sg), is a biomedical sciences investment-fund management company.

The facility will be Lonza’s second large-scale mammalian manufacturing plant in Singapore and the third one globally that the company has built.

The construction of the first shell of Lonza Biologics Tuas was initiated in February 2007. The final build-out of the facility will be completed and become fully operational at the latest in 2011, in line with custom commitments, said Lonza in a company release.

The capital investment could amount to $350 million depending upon customer requests. Lonza Biologics Tuas Pte Ltd. will have up to four mammalian bioreactor trains, each with a flexible capacity of 1000–20,000 L, inclusive of purification units.