SAFC® Invests in Liquid Media and Reagents ‘Centers of Excellence’ in St. Louis, MO and Irvine, Scotland

SAFC®, a member of the Sigma-Aldrich® Group (NASDAQ: SIAL), announced an expansion of its network of global ‘Centers of Excellence’ designed specifically to support the seamless upstream and downstream production of liquid cell culture reagents, including media, feeds and purification buffers at its St. Louis, Missouri site and its Irvine, Scotland facility. Together with the recently announced dry powder media manufacturing expansion at its facility in Lenexa, Kansas, these investments are expected to optimize manufacturing and supply chain in order to better serve the biopharmaceutical industry.

The investments include the creation of an additional, dedicated Animal Component Free (ACF) area at the Irvine facility and totally segregated ACF and Animal Component Containing (ACC) facilities in St. Louis, providing a complete range of cGMP liquid manufacturing, with batch capacities ranging from 1 liter up to 10,000 liters across both sites. Construction at the Centers of Excellence is scheduled for completion in the last quarter, 2010, with product qualification running through first quarter, 2011.

Harmonization of these North American and European Centers of Excellence facilities around key market requirements for environmental control and segregation is expected to ensure global product consistency while providing its customers with a robust and secure liquid reagents supply chain.

“As the biopharma market continues to mature and place an increasing emphasis on efficiency, cost containment and increased regulatory compliance, SAFC will continue its strategy to invest in manufacturing capabilities and facilities that uniquely address these requirements,” said SAFC President Gilles Cottier. “Our Irvine and St. Louis facilities will be harmonized in order to function as full range, back-up contingency sites that support each other, improving our risk profile for aseptic liquids manufacturing on a global basis. By minimizing product variability our aim is to reduce customer manufacturing costs while simultaneously enhancing their supply chain integrity.”
Source: SAFC