WuXi Biologics is investing €325 million in a new biologics drug substance manufacturing facility on the Industrial Development Authority’s (IDA) greenfield site in Dundalk, Co. Louth, Ireland. Headquartered in Wuxi city, Jiangsu province, China, WuXi Biologics is a global platform company providing services for biologics discovery, development and manufacturing.

This state-of-the-art facility will employ multiple single-use bioreactors for commercial biomanufacturing and is designed to be able to run continuous bioprocessing, a next generation manufacturing technology to be first implemented globally in this campus. A total of 48,000 L fed-batch and 6,000 L perfusion bioreactor capacity will be installed, representing the world’s largest facility using single-use bioreactors.

The manufacturing project in a 26-hectare campus, the company’s first site outside of China, is supported by the Irish Government through IDA Ireland. It will create 400 new jobs over five years.
 
“We have been engaging IDA and Ireland Strategic Investment Fund (ISIF) for several years before finalizing today’s exciting investment in this community. This is our second major partnership in Ireland, following WuXi NextCODE’s work with Genomics Medicine Ireland (GMI). These ventures showcase how competitive Ireland is for global enterprise and investment, and we are grateful for all the support local agencies and the talented people here have provided for us,” said Dr. Ge Li, Chairman of WuXi Biologics. 

Dr. Chris Chen, chief executive officer of WuXi Biologics, added, “We are all excited to initiate our first global site to enable local companies and expedite biologics development in Europe. In addition, this is the start and a critical part of our global biomanufacturing network to ensure that biologics are manufactured at the highest quality and with a robust supply chain to benefit patients worldwide. We are committed to Ireland and will work with all local partners to build this state-of-art next generation biomanufacturing facility as a showcase to the global biotech community.”