Production starts at new Cytiva manufacturing facility in Wales

10-Mar-2022 - Last updated on 10-Mar-2022 at 15:55 GMT

Energy efficient design: HVAC recirculation is provided by air return panels in columns to reduce processing demands for the facility. Pic: Cytiva

Global life sciences company Cytiva is opening a new 11,000 m² manufacturing facility in Cardiff, Wales.

The site will focus on making single-use bioprocessing tech for vaccines and biopharmaceuticals. Production of mixer bags, flow kits and tubing assemblies has begun, which will later be shipped to customers.

The plant is part of a two year $1.5bn global expansion plan to grow manufacturing capacity and services across geographies.

Cleanroom capacity

By the end of 2022, there will be six ISO 7 class cleanrooms in Cardiff (air is filtered at least 30 times an hour with set quality control procedures). The first cleanroom has been installed and validated in nine months through working with Connect 2 Cleanrooms, a global cleanroom design and build specialist.

Thousands of units of product are expected to be shipped globally from Cardiff in 2022. Construction on five more cleanrooms will be completed later this year.

Recruitment is under way to fill 250 jobs at the site.

The new site has installed energy meters to optimize electricity use and reduce overall consumption. Designers also investigating the use of ‘dynamic’ cleanroom controls to reduce power use by up to 60%. Meanwhile, the new neighboring offices will run close to carbon neutral.

Working towards regional manufacturing models

Cytiva and Pall’s $1.5bn expansion aims to realize regional manufacturing models with new sites in the UK and US. More than $300m will go towards expanding capacity for single-use technologies by expanding operations in the US and UK.

Once the Cardiff site is completed, it will help increase Cytiva’s global manufacturing capacity for single-use products by 20%.

While the UK has a strong sector in discovery research and start-up funding, a lack of domestic manufacturing has meant that scale up often happens off shore. Building regional manufacturing, such as that in Cardiff, can help address the current needs of the industry while establishing capabilities that support long-term growth, notes Cytiva.

Mary Blenn, vice president global supply chain at Cytiva, said: “Since 2020, we have invested and significantly increased global capacity to address our customers’ growing needs. We continue to expand with new manufacturing sites, such as that in Cardiff. This facility also gives us an enhanced presence in the UK, allowing us to provide more regional options to our customers there.”