December 4, 2014
By Riley McDermid, BioSpace.com Breaking News Editor
Stelis Biopharma, a subsidiary of Indian biopharma firm Strides Arcolab, said Thursday that is has begun construction on a 140,000 square foot manufacturing facility that will employ 180 people at Bio-Xcell Biotechnology Park in Nusajaya, Johor, Malaysia.
Stelis and Bio-XCell had previously announced the signing of a building and lease agreement worth $60 million for the facility, but have now begun actually building at the site. The projected is slated to be completed in 24 months and will incorporate “next-gen” single-use bio-processing technology with both mammalian and microbial manufacturing suites.
“Stelis is pleased to commence work on its flagship biopharmaceutical facility in Malaysia,” said Joe Thomas, CEO of Stelis, in a statement. “With its strong commitment to bio-economy, attractive incentives, quality infrastructure and enabling ecosystem, we are confident of making this our bio-manufacturing hub for regional and global markets.”
At peak operations, Stelis projects that the facility will employ 180 people in the research and development, manufacturing, quality assurance, quality control, analytical and regulatory departments. Strides itself has eight manufacturing facilities in more than 75 countries in developed and emerging markets.
The company said the park’s “strategic location” in the Iskandar region of Johor was chosen because of its close proximity to Singapore and access to a network of seaports and airports. That will help the biomanufacturer meet demands for cost-effective biologics that it says have been largely unmet in the region thus far.
“The partnership with Stelis Biopharma to build a state of the art, multi-product Biologics facility from the start, is seen as a first in Bio-XCell biotechnology Park and timely given the close working relationship over the years,” said said Rizatuddin Ramli, CEO of BioXCell.
“We are happy to see the second biopharma project to commence in Bio-XCell Park and for the facility to ground break over an aggressive construction timeline to see its operations in 2017,” he said. “It is yet another positive step forward for the park to strengthen the value proposition of the Bio-XCell ecosystem as a regional hub for industrial bio-manufacturing and bioprocessing.”
