Fujifilm Invests $1.6 Billion for Cell Culture Expansion
Fujifilm is preparing to invest $1.6 billion to ramp up the cell culture manufacturing services of its CDMO subsidiary Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies.
Most of the funds will be funneled into the Japanese company’s Hillerød, Denmark, site but College Station, Texas, will also benefit. The upgrade will add 450 new jobs at Hillerød, bringing the total number of employees to 1,055.
Plans for investment in production equipment center on increasing capability for GMP batch manufacturing with the addition of eight 20,000-liter bioreactors and two downstream processing streams.
When the project is completed, the Hillerød business expects to be Europe’s largest end-to-end CDMO with 20 bioreactors of 20,000-l capacity for drug substance production.
Fujifilm said the upgrade of the Danish site will also focus on sustainability, for example replacing an electric boiler with one powered by natural gas. The Diosynth Biotechnologies arm also will invest in technologies to cut water consumption.
Teiichi Goto, president and CEO of Fujifilm, said the further expansion of the bio CDMO business fits with the company’s strategy of leveraging both capital investment and technological innovation to meet the rapidly growing demand for high volume production of biopharmaceuticals.
By its own account, Fujifilm has invested more than $7.1 billion to expand its CDMO business over the past few years – the sum includes the acquisition of the Hillerød site from Biogen for $890 milion in August 2019. The healthcare business unit is now its largest in terms of sales revenue and operating profit.
Author: Dede Williams, Freelance Journalist
