Cytiva, a Massachusetts-based research and biopharma manufacturing specialist, has opened the doors to its production facility in Cardiff, Wales.
The 11,000-square-meter Welsh facility is already producing mixer bags, flow kits and tubing assemblies for customers for use in developing and manufacturing biopharmaceuticals like COVID-19 vaccines. Cytiva expects construction on five more clean rooms to wrap up later this year. The company, a subsidiary of conglomerate Danaher, is currently hiring for 250 positions at the factory.
The project is part of the $1.5 billion global expansion plan Cytiva unveiled last year. A year before, Cytiva revealed a $500 million expansion push.
“Since 2020, we have invested and significantly increased global capacity to address our customers’ growing needs,” Mary Blenn, a Cytiva vice president, said in a statement. “This facility also gives us an enhanced presence in the UK, allowing us to provide more regional options to our customers there.”
Cytiva’s global expansion plans include last September’s announcement that the company was building a $52.5 million facility in South Korea to make disposable cell-culture bags used in vaccine production.
The expansion by Cytiva is also part of an effort to relieve shortages of large, sterile plastic bags used to grow vaccine cells that was triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic and highlighted as a global concern by the World Health Organization.