ABEC opens Irish bioprocessing equipment plant
The firm bought the 87,000sq ft site in Fermoy, Ireland from French Firm FCI in January and has spent the past ten months converting the facility from one that made electronic components for the automative industry to a bioprocessing equipment plant.
“We are able to engineer, design, manufacture, and test the entire bioprocess and clean utility equipment set,” an ABEC spokesperson told biopharma-Reporter.com. This includes: “bioreactors, filtration and chromatography systems, single use systems, media and buffer prep/hold systems and CIP systems.”
The site “builds on our capability to deliver complete bioprocess solutions globally,” the firm added. It also has a large local customer base, to which it has already begun supplying, due to Ireland being somewhat of a biomanufacturing hub.
Irish investment
When Merck & Co. (known as MSD outside of North America) recently announced it was upping capacity at its Keytruda plant in Carlow, the news came as part of an ongoing trickle of expansions and investments from Big Biopharma in Ireland.
Last November, Bristol-Myers Squibb – a firm which says it expects 75% of its future product portfolio to be biologics – announced it was investing $900m into a new 30,000sq ft large-scale biologics facility in County Dublin.
Meanwhile, Pfizer has spent upwards of $130m at its Grange Castle, Dublin biologics site, while the country has also seen Eli Lilly, Regeneron and Alexion invest in biomanufacturing capacity.
The new ABEC facility has 50 employees and with the firm recently announcing it is acquiring Kell Stainless in County Meath, total Irish headcount will reach over 100.
