Symbiosis Pharmaceutical Services’ expansion saw an investment of £1.5m (1.9m) made to the Sterling site, which was part-funded by Innovate UK – provided by the UK government specifically for projects improving the supply of viral vectors.
An additional space of 8,000-square-feet has been added to the site, which will add capacity to its manufacturing services for supply chain management and additional temperature-controlled storage, as well as automated labelling and packaging equipment.
The contract manufacturing organization (CMO) plans to hire an additional 30 employees alongside the expansion, taking the company’s headcount to 90.
Overall, the expansion is in line with the growth of the business, which, specializing in viral vectors, has seen a growth in demand in recent years, related to the growing number of cell and gene therapies in the pipeline. As a result, the company’s CEO, Colin MacKay, said that its customer base had grown by more 25% in 2019.
Adding to this, the company noted that this recent expansion and general increased demand for services will see its output in 2020 be increased by approximately 25-30%.
When MacKay spoke to BioPharma-Reporter last month, he explained that the rapid growth of cell and gene therapies has allowed the ‘relatively smaller CMO players’, such as Symbiosis, to flourish.
Symbiosis is ‘well-positioned’ to do this by being able to offer capacity to clients on a short timeframe “who are experiencing frustrations with the wider industry and its lack of manufacturing.”
The expansion of the site is already fully completed and operational.