Xellia Pharmaceuticals, a specialty pharmaceutical company focusing on providing anti-infective treatments against serious and life-threatening infections, has held a ground breaking ceremony for a new US$25 million expansion at its Copenhagen headquarters and product manufacturing plant.
The ceremony celebrated the start of the construction of a state-of-the-art multi-story building that will house the latest sterile manufacturing equipment and containment solutions in a purpose built environment.
Xellia’s Copenhagen site is responsible for manufacturing, stability testing and packaging of both sterile active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and the finished dosage forms (FDFs) for anti-infectives such as vancomycin and colistimethate sodium.
Anti-microbial resistance is one of the world’s most serious threats to human health and Xellia’s specialty anti-infective medicines are often used as a last line of defence, where all other medicines have failed.
This upgrade in facilities will ensure that Xellia is able to continue to provide a reliable supply of injectable anti-infective critical care medicines and remain at the forefront of manufacturing excellence.
Xellia CEO, Carl-Åke Carlsson said: “We are pleased to celebrate the ground breaking ceremony of our new building. Xellia is one of the world’s leading suppliers of specialty anti-infectives and we are committed to constantly improving our facilities so that we can continue to produce a high quality and reliable supply.”
Since 2013, the Copenhagen site has increased its employee numbers by around 150 across different functions including roles relating to manufacturing.
Wholly owned by Novo Holdings A/S, the holding company of the Novo Group, Xellia has over the past 15 months invested significantly across several of its global sites. Recent developments include expanding production capacity for sterile injectable products in the US, while a new production facility in Cleveland, Ohio, received notification from the FDA in November 2016 to allow packaging and distribution of drug products. Full manufacturing of products is anticipated during 2018.
It completed the expansion of a new $13m, 3000m2, multi-story Centralised Laboratory Services building at the company's Budapest, Hungary, manufacturing site in August this year will strengthen its global anti-infective product capabilities with additional product stability and release testing expertise and capabilities.
The company is also expanded the Product and Innovation R&D team with more than 15 new scientists and around 1000 m2 of new lab space at its purpose-built Centre of Excellence in Zagreb, Croatia in September 2016.
The Zagreb site, now has around 100 employees, working to provide solutions for improving the efficacy, safety and delivery of existing anti-infectives, and reducing toxic side effects, to developing novel drug-device combination anti-microbial therapies.
