Parker Bioscience Filtration – a leader in motion and control technologies – has expanded manufacturing capabilities via a recent investment at its Birtley, UK site and is helping to support vaccine production in EMEA.
 
Expanding Capacity
 
Following a substantial development of its manufacturing facilities at Birtley, Parker Bioscience Filtration is now meeting increased demand for specialist single-use manifolds from vaccine producers and has the capacity to further increase its current manifold manufacturing output, should demand necessitate this.
 
A reliable supply of single-use manifolds is vital for the integrity and productivity of large-scale single-use bioprocessing operations. Parker Bioscience Filtration’s manifold manufacturing capability was made possible by a major phased investment program completed at Birtley in 2019, which included new manufacturing and testing facilities, extended laboratories and new cleanrooms, plus office and conferencing spaces. The site also houses a 600m² ISO Class 7 cleanroom facility, which is dedicated to the manufacture of single-use assemblies for biopharmaceutical operations.
 
Parker Bioscience Filtration designs, supplies and delivers systems for both upstream and downstream pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing, and provides integrated bioprocessing solutions that speed-up development times and increase efficiency and safety to enable reproducible quality.
 
Incorporating the expertise from the now Parker-owned brands of SciLog and domnick hunter, the company combines filtration, single-use fluid-handling systems and sensors into automated single-use solutions. It manufactures specialist components including filtration capsules for integration into single-use assemblies for all bioprocessing stages, single-use sensors, tubing, bioprocessing containers, retainers, junctions and connectors.
 
Launch of SciLog Suite
 
The investment program also saw the launch of The SciLog Suite, which provides personnel from across the biopharma sector with the opportunity to undertake interactive demonstrations with Parker Bioscience Filtration’s automated single-use bioprocessing systems and run trials to determine how the equipment can be used to optimize their processes. The facility is also used for in-depth training of operators and engineers.
 
The SciLog Suite features the SciLog SciPure FD system, which automates, standardizes and encloses final bulk filtration and dispense operations. Biopharmaceutical manufacturers are able to use this testing facility to gain a greater understanding of how their bulk filling processes could be improved through enclosure and automation. The facility also allows demonstrations and trials to be conducted on SciLog TFF system for tangential flow filtration operations and the SciLog NFF system for normal flow filtration operations.
 
Companies who use the facility can draw on the extensive expertise of Parker Bioscience Filtration’s product specialists, single-use system design engineers and its Technical Support Group.
 
Kris Holmes, general manager of Parker Bioscience Filtration, said, “The overall investment in our facilities has made our Birtley premises one of the most modern manufacturing sites for integrated bioprocessing solutions in EMEA. Our extensive manifold manufacturing capacity enables us to play a key role in the vaccine manufacturing supply chain in EMEA and we are delighted to be able to support the biopharmaceutical industry at a critical time, as operations scale-up to meet the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic.”
 
Parker Bioscience Filtration, with its sites in Birtley and Oxnard, California, supports customers both locally and globally in improving process control, efficiency and supply chain security throughout their production and packaging processes.