The new site in Delft, the Netherlands – which has already been operational for several months – is designed to cater for growing demand and is better suited to the type of high tech equipment that Applikon makes according to spokesman Erik Kakes.
He told BioPharma-Reporter.com that: “Over the past 5 years we have realized every year a double digit growth. The old facilities were getting too small and we wanted to move into one building for the Dutch employees.
“Next to this the old facilities did not match the high tech image of products that we are developing and producing.”
Applikon makes a wide range of bioreactors for applications in laboratory scale R&D and pilot scale production through to commercial manufacturing.
At the larger scale the firm focuses on making stainless steel systems, however, it also produces single-use systems in collaboration with partners as Kakes explained.
“We work with HyClone and ATMI to supply single-use turnkey solutions for pilot plant and production scale. We supply the control systems and the software and we do the integration of the single use systems with these controls.
He went on to say that: “Applikon or the single-use supplier can bring these Applikon/HyClone or Applikon/ATMI turnkey systems to the market.”
Kakes added that the 100 employees based at the new HQ will work with colleagues at other Applikon sales and manufacturing plants in the UK, the US and China to sell systems to drugmakers, CMOs and CROs in the vaccine sector and wider biopharmaceutical industry.