Construction of the plant in Marlborough, Massachusetts, US expands the company’s contract manufacturing operation which, in turn, helps drives growth of its FlexFactory business.
Xcellerex already operates a plant at its Marlborough headquarters and is now building another current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) facility. The new site, which is due to be finished in September, allows Xcellerex to meet a “surge in interest”, said Guy Broadbent, company CEO.
Clients installing their own FlexFactory facilities will be provided with transitional biomanufacturing services from the new facility. Broadbent said providing this transitional support helps clients speed deployment of their own FlexFactory facilities.
Furthermore, the facility will provide clients without their own production capacity with contract manufacturing services. Offering contract manufacturing allows Xcellerex to engage with clients at an early stage in their development.
As these clients grow and add in-house capacity Xcellerex can offer them FlexFactory and transition between the sites because process development has been performed.
Operating its own site also allows Xcellerex to demonstrate the capabilities of FlexFactory. "The timeline in which we will bring this cGMP facility online will dramatically underscore the leap in deployment speed that FlexFactory enables”, said Broadbent.
Xcellerex expects the facility to be operational in September, six months after the project began, and believes the costs involved are significantly lower than for a conventional facility. When operational the facility will provide prospective clients with a hands-on educational tool.
Housed at the new facility are 2,000 litre Xcellerex XDR single-use bioreactors and modular single-use downstream unit operations through bulk-product.