Vetter Expands Filling Capacity

The CDMO Vetter is investing more than $100 million across its production sites in Germany and the United States to expand and upgrade its facilities to expand filling capacity. Two new filling lines are currently being designed for Vetter's Ravensburg South facility in Germany. The new lines will fill liquid cartridges and vials and will add to the production site’s current lines, one of which is a syringe line that was launched in the spring of 2013. At Vetter’s US clinical manufacturing facility in Chicago, a third filling line for prefilled syringes is nearing completion. Expected to be operational in 2014, the new clinical line will have a maximum batch size of 30,000.

To enhance efficiency in up-and downstream processes but also to accommodate the additional capacity, Vetter is expanding its storage volume for cold-and room-temperature products as well as frozen products. In addition, two new thawing rooms in a Class 100,000 environment and two more lyophilizers will be added to the currently nine in operation. Also, Vetter’s single-use isolator technology is being expanded and implemented at Vetter production facilities to lower risk of product cross-contamination with high-potent compounds, such as hormones and cancer therapeutics.

Source: Vetter