The 15,000sqft expansion new good manufacturing practices (GMP) and good laboratory practices (GLP) compliant laboratories and extra storage capacity. SGS has also set up a dedicated area for customer audits and planning.
Site general manager John Pirro said the expanded lab "will provide future capacity to service the growing needs of the bio/pharmaceutical market with expanded capabilities for stability and other project work."
This was echoed by Anne Hays, executive VP, SGS Life Science Services, who said that: "With outsourcing becoming an integral part of large multinational pharmaceutical companies’ strategies, we want to assure our clients that we can accommodate both their routine and complex bio/pharmaceutical analytical outsourcing needs, integrating the latest developments in regulatory compliance."
The expansion fits with SGS’ efforts to build in biopharmaceuticals testing, which began with the acquisition of Wokingham, UK-based M-Scan in 2010 and continued with the purchase of Glasgow, Scotland-headquartered Vitrology earlier this year.
The investment is also in keeping with the firm’s wider ambition of being the word leader in biopharmaceutical testing services by 2014.
This strategy saw it increase testing capacity at its lab in Poitiers, France in 2010 on two occasions, set up a second testing site in India and added formulation development services at its facility in Illinois.
More recently SGS opened a dedicated assay development site at its Poitiers facility.
The New Jersey investment is unlikely to be the Swiss testing firm’s last in the continent if comments it made at Interphex earlier this year are any indication.
At the time SGS told Outsourcing-pharma.com that it plans to offer formulation development services similar to those recently launched at its laboratory in Illinois, US at one of its sites in Europe in due course.