In a speech to employees and partner companies, WACKER Executive Board member Auguste Willems expressed his appreciation: “Today, we have seen with our own eyes how you are proceeding full speed ahead with construction of the new facility. Nevertheless, it is just as important that quality is high, the budget is met and, above all, that no accidents occur – challenges that you have been mastering well.” At the same time, Willems thanked attending officials of the state of Thuringia and the city of Jena for their support: “Without the active and competent efforts of authorities and administrators, we wouldn’t be looking at such a smooth-running construction site here, but rather at a green field,” he said.
The investment involves two expansion projects at the Jena site on the Beutenberg Campus. The new lab building, for which the topping-out ceremony is being held today, serves to bolster process development and quality control. WACKER has developed a proprietary secretion technology that has met with very good customer response. WACKER’s patented E.coli-based secretion system is an innovative technology for the cost-efficient production of protein drugs. This is why Wacker Biotech GmbH is now expanding its process-development facilities to accommodate growing customer inquiries. The quality control labs are being extended, too. As a result, Wacker Biotech GmbH will fully and optimally satisfy approval agencies’ standards for stricter analytical characterization of products and processes.
The second expansion project is an extension of the existing GMP-certified (Good Manufacturing Practice) production facility, which will double in size. And a completely new product-purification plant is expected to reduce existing bottlenecks. WACKER’s new facility will satisfy the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s GMP requirements, as well as those of the European Medicines Agency. With this expansion, Wacker Biotech is providing customers with sufficient capacity to produce biopharmaceuticals in the advanced development stage for commercial market supply. WACKER expects to have the new plant up and running by the end of 2009.
“With its investment in new production facilities, WACKER has taken another key strategic step in the promising and dynamically growing biologics market segment,” said WACKER Executive Board member Auguste Willems. “Accordingly, WACKER is developing the necessary production capacity for its customers and their successful products. At the same time, we can now make our secretion system available to even more customers.”
About Wacker Biotech
Wacker Biotech GmbH is a full-service contract manufacturer of biopharmaceutical products based on microbial systems. Its portfolio ranges from molecular biology and process development, through GMP-compliant production of clinical test samples and actives, to commercial market supply and comprehensive analytical services. Above all, Wacker Biotech offers proprietary technologies that satisfy market needs for increasingly cost-efficient and top-quality production. Two examples are its E. coli-based secretion system and a special high-cell-density fermentation process. Jena-based Wacker Biotech is a wholly-owned WACKER subsidiary.