Piramal Pharma’s solutions business has announced the expansion of its Antibody-Drug Conjugate (ADC) capabilities at the Grangemouth facility.
Along with investment in new infrastructure at its Morpeth facility, these expansions and upgrades represent a total investment of approximately £55m in the Indian company’s UK-based drug development and manufacturing capabilities, as well as new employment opportunities for technical and operational staff.
In the first phase of the Grangemouth site expansion, two new ADC manufacturing suites, operational by the third quarter of 2023, will be added to the existing three.
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 additional large-scale manufacturing suites capable of handling increased batch sizes.
A new customer experience centre is also being constructed, with ground preparation and piling works well under way.
The new facility is being built on a five-acre brownfield plot less than 100 meters from the existing site.
It is expected that this expansion will create approximately 40 to 50 new jobs, bringing the total number of employees at the site to more than 250.
Peter DeYoung, chief executive at Piramal Pharma Solutions, said: “This new development will more than double our ADC production capacity, strengthening our ability to service customers throughout the entire drug lifecycle.
“The primary driver behind this investment is the demand for commercial ADCs, coupled with a strong pipeline for clinical materials.”
This expansion represents an investment of £45m, including a grant of £2.4m from Scottish Enterprise.
The development body's chief executive Adrian Gillespie commented: “Piramal’s investment is tremendous news for Scotland’s life sciences sector, one of the largest life sciences clusters in Europe, and is creating new, high-quality jobs that are crucial to our economic recovery.
“With Scottish Enterprise support, the company’s Grangemouth site expansion proposals will deliver more R&D and production capacity for the development, scale up and commercial manufacture of drugs in the global fight against cancer.”
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