Piramal upgrading UK sites

Indian-based CDMO Piramal Pharma Solutions (PPS) is to invest about £55 million to expand two sites in the UK. It will expand its antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) capabilities at Grangemouth in Scotland and new API infrastructure at Morpeth in north-east England.

In the first phase at Grangemouth, two new ADC manufacturing suites will be added to the existing three for operation by Q3 2023. The building has been designed to accommodate further expansion, with planned future phases that include a new sterile fill-finish suite dedicated to ADCs and two more large-scale manufacturing suites capable of handling increased batch sizes.

It will be fully supported by analytical laboratories for QC, cell-based assay and ELISA, plus warehousing and administrative offices, all housed in a purpose-built facility. A new ‘customer experience centre is also being built. Groundbreaking took place on 7 February. The new facility sits on a brownfield site close to the existing facilities.

Grangemouth already offers rapid development for early clinical materials and scalable late-phase development to support trials and commercial launch. “By combining these skills with offerings from our other thirteen global facilities, including fill-finish, payloads, and peptides, we can provide integrated ADC services to customers looking for fast, simplified solutions,” PPS said.

The total £45 million investment includes a grant of £2.4 million from Scottish Enterprise, Scotland's economic development agency. It is also co-funded by clients to facilitate the continued evolution of the business through the commercialisation of customer products, together with satisfying the strong pipeline of early phase clinical demand. About 40-45 jobs are expected to be created.

The approximately £10 million investment at Morpeth includes new equipment, infrastructure and utility systems. It is intended to meet increased market demand from global API customers while also improving PPS’ carbon footprint by replacing obsolete equipment with new, energy-efficient alternatives. PPS is investing £8 million directly, while the UK government is contributing £2 million to the project.