If facility plans and openings during a down economy are a harbinger of better days ahead, grab your sunglasses. Several contract manufacturing announcements indicate that production demand is on the rise.
Formulation developer CoreRx has announced plans to expand in the U.S. and Schering-Plough has opened a facility in The Netherlands.
CoreRx says that growing customer demand drove its plans to purchase a new facility in Tampa, FL, which triples capacity and accommodates growth projected through 2015. The 80,000-square-foot building will be remodeled, up-fitted and expanded to house current staff plus 55 new employees. CoreRx says in an announcement that it will relocate headquarters to the site, and use it for contract manufacturing and formulation R&D. The additional jobs will include management, research scientists, research and manufacturing employees, as well as staff for facilities and maintenance.
For Schering-Plough, the manufacturing facility in Oss, The Netherlands, will help the company meet demand for injectable drugs and hormonal products, as well as boost its capacity to make biologics. There's also a contract manufacturing element: Schering-Plough participates in BioConnection, a European program to offer young biopharma companies access to GMP manufacturing facilities and support services. BioConnection has co-invested in the new plant and will be using 25 percent of its capacity.
The 16,500-square-meter facility houses three production lines and was built adjacent to the main Schering-Plough production facilities. Some 80 to 100 staff will work there.
There's also Norwich Pharmaceuticals, which provides contracting manufacturing support for clinical trials, scale up and commercial launch. The company announced a $3 million investment in infrastructure and equipment to support pilot-scale clinical trial material for the manufacture of high potency compounds, including fast dissolve and controlled release tablets.
- read the CoreRx announcement
- here's the Schering-Plough report
- read the Norwich release