Vetter, a German contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) serving the pharmaceutical industry, has completed the construction of its Schuetzenstrasse multi-functional building in Ravensburg and staff have started to move in.
The €29m investment in the new 8,500m2, six-storey building, which took two years to build, is part of a total of EUR300m earmarked last September for developing its manufacturing sites and adding capacity.
The firm says the Schuetzenstrasse building itself is in response to an increase in demand by customers for support in drug development, as well as the need for enhanced IT systems to meet future customer and regulatory requirements.
The new building contains non-cGMP laboratories for development support, laboratory space for microbiological analysis, office workplaces for Vetter Development Service and IT as well as in its core, a data processing centre with enhanced security systems, including a safety cell that protects technology and data from external physical hazards in the event of an emergency.
'With the installation of these future-oriented IT systems, we are early-on addressing the need for increased connectivity between customers and their manufacturing partners, like Vetter, to efficiently share and store data without concern for its safety,' said Oliver Albrecht, a Vetter Managing Director.
'The new building is further evidence that Vetter is well-prepared to meet present and future industry challenges and requirements.'
The firm said 2015 was another successful year as evidenced by a growing customer demand for projects in clinical development, commercial manufacturing, and final packaging. as a result, the CDMO increased sales by approximately 10%. Currently, the company employs around 3,600 people at its locations in Germany, US, and Asia.
During 2015, the firm also supported nine drug approvals of its customers and in the third quarter opened a new subsidiary in Tokyo, Japan to complement the Singapore branch created in 2014.
A few weeks earlier, the company launched Vetter-Ject, a novel closure system for prefilled syringes for use with highly-sensitive compounds such as biologics.
