In December 2015, Avid Bioservices – the contract manufacturing subsidiary of Peregrine Pharmaceuticals – completed construction of the ‘Myford’ facility, its second bioproduction plant housing single-use bioreactors of up to 2,000L.
At the time the firm said it was already eyeing up extra capacity to cope with expected demand for contract monoclonal antibody manufacturing, and this week confirmed to Biopharma-Reporter that construction of a third plant will begin in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2016.
“The new clinical suite is expected to be complete and ready for clinical manufacturing activities by mid calendar year 2017,” we were told.
The suite will incorporate two 1,000L single-use bioreactors and, like the firm’s current two facilities, will be located in Tustin, California.
“As Avid continues to expand both its services and manufacturing capacity, we expect demand from biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies to remain high.”
$110m contract revenues
Last year, the firm’s Franklin facility pulled in around $40m of revenue, and the new Myford plant is expected to generate the same annually.
According to the firm’s financial projections, manufacturing revenue for the full fiscal year 2017 is expected to be between $50- $55m.
But the addition of the third plant is expected to push total revenues for the CDMO to over $100m, Peregrine’s CFO Paul Lytle said in a conference call to discuss the firm’s Q1 FY2107 results last week.
“We believe the third facility will again significantly increase our manufacturing capacity and all three manufacturing facilities will have the potential to generate in total approximately $110 million in annual revenue.”
Furthermore, Peregrine reported a disappointing quarter with clinical and commercial biomanufacturing contributing $5.6m, a drop of 42% on the same quarter last year.
The firm attributed this to a backlog at a third-party testing lab that shifted the timing of revenue recognition from the first quarter to the second quarter of fiscal year 2017.