Fujifilm opens biopharma CDMO site

Fujifilm Biotechnologies has opened an expansion at its site in Teesside, which it says will be the largest single-use biopharmaceutical CDMO facility in the UK. Built at a cost of about £400 million, it covers 10,200 m2 of space and will be operational within 1H 2026

The facility houses a total of 19,000 litres of capacity in 2,000 and 5,000 litre single-use bioreactors for small- and mid-scale antibody manufacturing, with the flexibility to expand to support customer programmes as needed. 

This is the first small-l and mid-scale manufacturing site in the company’s kojoX ecosystem. It also features the SymphonX downstream processing skid, an all-in-one equipment design to run all downstream unit operations across multiple scales. 

In parallel, the company has has opened its Bioprocess Innovation Centre UK, a laboratory for both high-throughput, and continuous process development capabilities. This will also be a global centre of excellence for biomanufacturing innovation and process development. Covering 9,500 m2, it doubles the site’s lab footprint. 

“The opening of our UK expansion, will enable us to support our partners’ products from the process development stage to early clinical manufacturing – ranging from low-volume therapies for ultra-rare diseases to commercial biologics all from one site,” said Toshihisa Iida, chairman of Fujifilm Biotechnologies.