Mark Rohlfing, director of quality at the contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) said investment in the new 271,000 cubic foot storage facility had been motivated by market observations and recognition of capacity limitations.
“Our current cold storage capacity in Audubon was limited, hence the 400 per cent increase in capacity,” explained Rohlfing, adding that “we have also built large cold stores at our other sites in recent years to support this change.”
The new unit features temperature-controlled storage space for 1,600 pallets a massive increase on the capacity offered by Almac’s cold-chain facility in Audubon, Pennsylvania.
The firm also increased its general storage area, where products are stored at temperatures across the 15 to 25°C range, with the addition of space for an additional 2,100 pallets.
The US investment is also in keeping with a recent expansion Almac undertook at its manufacturing base in Craigavon, Northern Ireland, which saw it add cold storage capacity for an additional 625 pallets.
Almac is not the only CMO to be predicting an increased demand for cold-storage for biologics. UK rival Penn Pharmaceutical recently announced that construction of its new facility would be completed at the end of the month.
And even before that NextPharma, BioStorage Technologies and Bilcare all said that were investing in in-house cold storage capacity for biodrugs and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in response to rising demand.