WuXi makes moves across the globe

Abstract

The giant pharmaceutical services firm WuXi AppTec has announced expansions across its businesses worldwide. WuXi Biologics, a subsidiary that trades on the Hong Kong stock exchange, will spend $390 million in Dundalk, Ireland, to build what it says will be the world’s largest facility employing single-use bioreactors. The plant will also implement for the first time a continuous process WuXi developed for biological drug manufacturing. The site, expected to provide 400 permanent jobs, will be WuXi Biologics’ first outside China. Separately, STA Pharmaceutical, WuXi’s subsidiary for pharmaceutical chemical manufacturing, will build a huge new lab near its original location in the Jinshan district of Shanghai. Large enough for 500 scientists, the facility will provide process development services for pharmaceutical ingredients and complex intermediates. STA is already adding labs and production facilities at its newer site in Changzhou. In Cranbury, N.J., meanwhile, WuXi just completed an expansion of its ...