Fuji completes cell culture manufacturing expansion in U.K.

In April, Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies outlined $130 million in projects it had undertaken to build up a biologics CMO business, and this week it said one of those projects is ready.

The Japanese company has opened its $9 million, 10,000-square-foot, cell culture process development laboratories in Billingham, U.K., which will support its monoclonal antibody (mAb) platform for cell culture development work.

RELATED: Fujifilm invests $116M in U.S. as it races competitors for biologics contract work

The company this spring completed a $93 million Texas manufacturing facility it picked up several years ago in its buyout of College Station, Texas-based Kalon Biotherapeutics. Kalon's facilities include high containment manufacturing and a cell culture capacity of 6,000 liters that can be expanded to 24,000 liters in upstream capacity.  

Fuji in April said that it intended to invest another $23 million to expand the Texas manufacturing facility. 

All of this is with the goal of hitting about $1 billion in biologics contract work by 2023 as Fuji races competitors to capture the burgeoning biologics CDMO business.