Throughout the year, projects all over the globe have been breaking ground or have been completed. Some have been expansions, and some are new projects, but these facilities have been indicative of the continued growth of the manufacturing industry despite the surrounding global challenges.
Here is a look at some of the biggest manufacturing projects that have come about in 2022.
Billion-dollar biotech manufacturing hub in NC
It’s no secret that the Tar Heel State has been serving the pharma and biotech manufacturing industry heavily over the past few years, with major names planting their flags in the red clay of North Carolina.
So, it was no surprise that at the beginning of the year that a biotech manufacturing hub came to the state.
The price tag for the project was a
staggering $1 billion
. A hub in Morrisville, NC will add another 1.5 million square feet for biotechs to house lab space and manufacturing. The Spark LS development is backed by Trinity Capital, a North Carolina developer, and Starwood Capital, which is based out of Miami. The site will also include space for retail stores with the massive campus set to capitalize on the region’s recent growth.
Once completed, it will have between 12 and 15 buildings, green spaces, a STEM Education and Amenity Center and several spaces for outdoor recreation.
Fujifilm Diosynth adds to its NC facility
CDMO behemoth Fujifilm Diosynth announced that it would
double its existing laboratory footprint
in North Carolina and add another 145 skilled jobs to the site by 2024. Another 89,000 square feet will be added, which will allow for a more robust commercial process.
The BIC opened in May 2016 as a three-story, 62,000-square-foot facility for process invention, design and development.
Amgen breaks ground on half a billion on NC manufacturing site
Gov. Roy Cooper was joined by Amgen executives and area politicians for a groundbreaking ceremony in Holly Springs, NC.
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Continuing with the trend of early news from North Carolina, Amgen
broke ground on a $550 million
drug substance plant serving as one of two massive upgrades in the US.
Wake County and the Holly Springs local government awarded Amgen with job development grants worth $12.6 million and $22.8 million, respectively, contingent upon hiring milestones.
Construction is scheduled to finish by 2029, though the plant will be operational in 2025. New hires will include engineers, technicians, quality, management and administrative staff. The average salary of the new positions added is expected to reach nearly $120,000, close to double what the current average is in Wake County. Another 350 jobs are expected to be added, upon the site’s completion.
Eli Lilly’s $1.5B expansion projects on two sides of the Atlantic
Pharma giant Eli Lilly kicked off the year looking to bring in 900 hires and
pump almost $1.5 billion
into two new manufacturing facilities in Ireland and North Carolina with the sites looking to boost production of diabetes and cancer products and eventually Alzheimer’s and obesity medications.
In Limerick, Ireland, a $446 million investment will expand the active pharmaceutical ingredient and monoclonal antibody production.
In Concord, NC, a $1 billion project will focus on injectables and medical devices. This means that in the last five years, Lilly has pumped $4 billion into global manufacturing, including $2 billion in the US.
$528M Cell and gene therapy plant planned for Southern Ontario
Architectural rendering of the OmniaBio facility at Hamilton’s McMaster Innovation Park (CNW Group/Invest Ontario)
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Turning to the north of the US border, a major project is coming to the city of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Ontario’s government in the spring
unveiled plans for a $580 million
new cell and gene therapy manufacturing center in Hamilton. The site will be built at the McMaster Innovation Park and create at least 250 new jobs by 2024. OmniaBio will take up space in the center to develop therapies for cancer, cardiovascular disease, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes. There will be two buildings, and the site is taking the place of an old automotive manufacturing center.
OmniaBio spun out of the Toronto-based Centre for Commercialization of Regenerative Medicine and plans to increase its biomanufacturing capacity six-fold.
The company uses AI to explore patient-specific data, identify the best disease subgroups to target and design patient-specific treatment options. It is also working with several companies and organizations to boost cell and gene manufacturing in Canada.
Merck KGaA expanding Irish site to the tune of €440M
Going back to Ireland and the southern city of Cork, German pharma Merck KGaA is expanding its membrane and filtration manufacturing capabilities.
The company
will invest approximately €440 million
($430 million) to increase membrane manufacturing capacity in Carrigtwohill, Ireland, and build a new manufacturing facility at Blarney Business Park, in County Cork, Ireland.
The investment, which is the largest in a single site ever for the life science side of Merck KGaA, will aim to create more than 370 permanent jobs by the end of 2027.
The company will build a new filtration manufacturing facility for a price tag of €150 million ($146.8 million). Once fully operational, according to the company, it will increase the company’s global manufacturing capacity and supply customers producing both traditional and new treatments and therapeutics.
For the expansion in Carrigtwohill, the company will be looking at investing €290 million ($283.8 million) to add a manufacturing facility for the use of immersion casting of membranes. These membranes support novel and gene therapies, as well as applications like virus sterilization.
Eli Lilly to invest $2.1B in projects on its home turf
Lilly is solidifying its position in the Hoosier state with a
$2.1 billion investment
.
The money is going toward two new manufacturing sites at Indiana’s LEAP Lebanon Innovation and Research District in Boone County, northwest of Lilly’s headquarters in Indianapolis.
The two new facilities will expand Lilly’s manufacturing network for active ingredients and new therapeutic modalities, including genetic medicines.
The proposed project is expected to create up to 500 new Lilly jobs with an additional four indirect jobs for every Lilly position created, based on industry data. An estimated 1,500 construction jobs will be required.
Lonza to build a fill-finish facility in Switzerland
CDMO giant Lonza has been getting into the construction game heavily this year, and one of its larger projects is near its HQ in Switzerland.
The company
plans to construct
a large-scale commercial drug fill and finish facility in the town of Stein, Switzerland. The new facility will be delivered through an investment of approximately CHF 500 million ($519 million) and is expected to be completed in 2026. The facility will also be constructed on the same campus as Lonza’s current clinical drug product facility.
According to Lonza, this investment will enable the company to provide an end-to-end capability for commercial drug product manufacturing at a large-scale market supply, with a variety of pharmaceutical products being produced at the facility in different commercial formats.
Samsung plans for a second bio campus
One of South Korea’s largest conglomerates, Samsung, announced earlier this year that it would spend more on the biotech portion of its business. With those funds being committed, the company is moving forward with expanding its physical presence.
This summer the company announced that it has
signed a land purchase agreement
with the Incheon Free Economic Zone to support the build-out of its second bio campus, dubbed Bio Campus II. Samsung stated that the 3.8 million square foot land purchase is valued at about $324 million. The land, which is located within the Songdo Industrial Cluster, will be 30% larger than the company’s current campus.
The new campus will support further expansion of large-scale manufacturing capacity along with a plant and an innovation facility. According to the
Yonhap News Agency
, the company is planning to add 400 new jobs following construction, with a total of 4,000 additional jobs added by 2032.
Abbott Laboratories planning for $450M+ build in Ireland
Entering the latter half of the year, expansion projects in Ireland seemed to kick into high gear, with Abbott being one of the major players to make a move.
The Irish Times
reported
that Abbott Laboratories
is investing €440 million
, or about $451 million, to build a new manufacturing plant in Kilkenny, located in the country’s southeast, to make more of its glucose monitors.
According to an Abbott spokesperson in an email to Endpoints, the company anticipates that more than 800 people will be employed at the Kilkenny facility once it opens, and the remainder will be employed at its site in Donegal.
The new 250,000-square-foot building in Kilkenny will look to be online by 2024 and will be responsible for the manufacturing of its Freestyle Libre 3 system for continuous glucose monitoring and has started recruiting employees.
WuXi AppTec’s US site kicks off construction
Governor John Carney, Lieutenant Governor Bethany Hall-Long, Mayor Kenneth Branner, Jr., Delaware Prosperity Partnership President Kurt Foreman, WuXi AppTec Chairman and CEO Ge Li, WuXi AppTec Co-CEO and WuXi STA CEO Minzhang Chen, and others celebrate the groundbreaking for the WuXi STA Middletown campus.
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Chinese CDMO WuXi AppTec has also been expanding its physical presence in China this year, but its latest project in the US put its right in President Joe Biden’s backyard.
The company
broke ground
on a 190-acre manufacturing campus in Middletown, DE. According to the company, this site will be WuXi’s second facility in the US, and it will create around 500 full-time jobs by 2026. But there are plans to kick off operations in 2025.
The Delaware BioScience Association reported that WuXi paid $30 million for the land with the site costing a total of $510 million. The site is also backed by $19 million in taxpayer-funded grants.
The company did not provide information on what exact products will be manufactured once completed, however it will be able to provide formulation development and clinical and commercial drug product manufacturing services for oral and injectable products. The site will also be able to package, label, store and distribute services for clinical trial materials and commercial drug products.