GSK opened the £56m ($80m) plant - named Building U3 - in Ware, Hertfordshire last week at a site adjacent to its existing Ellipta manufacturing facility. The firm said together the plants will produce 37m inhalers a year by 2017 and supply multiple international markets.
A spokeswoman told us “currently we supply over 70 markets from Ware, which is increasing monthly as more markets launch products from our Ellipta portfolio.”
GSK is installing a line for the dry powder inhalers at its facility in Zebulon, North Carolina in the US however the Ware facilities will continue to supply the US.
“Zebulon will come online this year with Ware continuing to manufacture for launch markets across the world" the spokeswoman said.
The Ellipta inhaler differs from GSK’s diskus system – which is used to deliver Advair – in that can hold one or two blister strips, with each blister containing a sealed single dose of medication.
This means it can be used to deliver drugs containing one or two APIs and – according to the authors of a GSK funded study – “enables the formulations for each product to be developed individually, since they are stored separately until the point of administration.”
Ellipta is used to deliver a range of GSK’s respiratory drugs, including the combination asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) drug Relvar/Breo, a version of the product called Revinity that is sold in Italy and the COPD monotherapy Incruse.
The Ware plant supplies the Ellipta device for these and will “also make clinical trials supply for the inhaled products which are in development” according to the spokeswoman.