Lonza also gains 100% ownership of 80,000-L facility under construction.
Lonza and Bio*One Capital will build a large-scale mammalian cell culture facility in Singapore to manufacture commercial biopharmaceuticals, under a new joint venture, Lonza Biologics Tuas. Depending upon customer request, Lonza anticipates the capital investment will amount up to $350 million. This will be the second large-scale mammalian manufacturing plant in Singapore and the third one globally that Lonza has built.
Lonza Biologics Tuas, located in Tuas Biomedical Park, will have up to four mammalian bioreactor trains. Each will have a flexible capacity of 1,000 up to 20,000 liters inclusive of the respective purification units. Lonza expects the facility to become operational latest by 2011.
The 80,000-liter large-scale mammalian biopharmaceutical production facility to be built under the February 2006 joint venture between the two companies is now completely owned by Lonza, according to the Lonza Biologics Tuas joint venture. Genentech holds the exclusive option to acquire the Lonza-owned facility, which is producing the company’s cancer drug Avastin, between 2007 and 2012.
