Beijing aims to build Asia's biggest CMO

You can never accuse the Chinese of thinking small. The latest: A Chinese consortium is planning to build Asia's largest contract manufacturing base in Beijing. The $120 million project is slated for the Beijing Yizhuang Development Zone, an area that already houses more than 100 biopharma ventures.

Contract manufacturing has been growing by leaps and bounds as pharma firms look for ways to boost efficiency and cut costs. By outsourcing manufacturing, drugmakers can more easily scale production to demand. And to save money, companies are increasingly looking at moving manufacturing work to Asia, where low labor costs make production a lot cheaper than in Europe or the U.S.

Hence the Chinese CMO project--and with Big Pharma's big plans for China these days, the new facility is well timed. Drugmakers are looking to beef up in that country--both for domestic sales and for exporting to other markets. The new contract manufacturing hub is a project of Suma Ventures, Autek Bio, and Beijing Yizhuang International Investment Co. 

- see the story in People's Daily

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