The multinational conglomerate Fujifilm will invest $1.6 billion to improve and ramp up the cell culture manufacturing services of its CDMO subsidiary Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies.
Most of the investment will focus on a site in Hillerød, Denmark. A site in College Station, Texas, will also benefit from a funding injection.
The investment will increase the capacity of its cGMP batch manufacturing with the addition of eight 20,000L bioreactors and two downstream processing streams.
Fujifilm boasts that the Hillerød facility will be the largest end-to-end CDMO in Europe with 20 x 20,000L bioreactors for drug substance production.
The Denmark facility will also have sustainable production features. For example, it will use an electric boiler rather than one powered by natural gas. Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies also will invest in technologies to curb water consumption.
Fujifilm expects the investment to create roughly 450 jobs. There are already 1,055 employees who work at the Hillerød site.
“Fujifilm is further expanding its bio CDMO business with the growth strategy of both capital investment and technological innovation to fulfill rapidly growing demand for high volume production of biopharmaceuticals,” said Teiichi Goto, president and CEO, representative director of Fujifilm Corp., in a statement “With this major investment in the large-scale production facility and the deployment of the next-generation production technology, we will be the best partner for customers as the premier bio CDMO. Fujifilm will, through creation of new value from innovation, contribute to the stable supply of high-quality biopharmaceuticals and to promoting a healthy society and further growth of healthcare industry.”
Fujifilm purchased the Hillerød site from Biogen in August 2019.
Over the past few years, Fujifilm has invested more than $7.1 billion to expand its CDMO business.
Fujifilm’s healthcare business unit has become the company’s largest segment in terms of revenue and operating income.