A month after unveiling plans to build a production facility in the United Arab Emirates, San Diego-based manufacturer National Resilience said it will spend $225 million to upgrade its Cincinnati facility and expand its rapid transfer port in North Carolina.
Resilience, which was established in 2020, is aiming to scale up production capacity with a goal of providing more than 200 million units across its network by 2025. The company's network supports a number of modalities, including the popular class of GLP-1 diabetes and obesity medicines, the company said in a Feb. 20 press release.
Currently, the Cincinnati site runs three high-speed fill lines for vials, cartridges and prefilled syringes. Resilience expects to have a fourth prefilled syringe line running by 2025. Plans call for the facility to expand to offer six device assembly and packaging suites within the same time frame.
“As a highly experienced team already supporting a leading pharmaceutical company with their GLP-1 products, this expansion further supports Resilience’s mission to ensure adequate biomanufacturing capacity by addressing and overcoming historic manufacturing challenges throughout the industry," Rahul Singhvi, Resilience’s chief executive, said in the release.
The Resilience news comes shortly after GLP-1 drug maker Novo Nordisk struck a deal to acquire CDMO giant Catalent, sending shock waves through the drug manufacturing industry. Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly have been working on major GLP-1 manufacturing expansions in recent years, and Catalent was a top contract manufacturer in the space.
Meanwhile, at Resilience, the company said its Durham, North Carolina, plant that is mainly focused on gene therapy medicine has about 45,000 square feet of available space for production expansion. Those plans include adding a new isolator filler that will support vial and prefilled syringe manufacturing. Resilience acquired the site from bluebird bio in a 2021 in a deal valued at $110 million.