PCI Pharma Services, a biopharma contract manufacturing partner, has unveiled plans for a $50 million expansion at its Rockford, Illinois, sterile injectables site.
The project will add a new 200,000-square-foot facility to boost the plant’s capacity for injectable drug-device combination products, the company said in a March 14 press release.
The new facility will house more than 20 dedicated customer suites with multiformat machines used for the assembly and packaging of vials, prefilled syringes, auto-injectors, and pen-cartridge combinations. The technology can be used for the popular glucagon-like peptide 1 agonist class of drugs prescribed to treat diabetes and obesity, and for drugs to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, the company said.
“The need for injectable drug-delivery device combination product capacity and expertise is critical, and we are responding with a world-class facility to address the future demands of our global clients so they can focus on developing therapies to improve the lives of patients with serious chronic conditions," Salim Haffar, PCI’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The project is expected to create 250 jobs over the next two years and is likely create more positions in the next three to five years, the company said. The new facility is scheduled to be fully operational by the summer of 2024.
Back in 2019, PCI started a separate, 30,000-square-foot expansion of the site. That project added a temperature-controlled suite, customer reception area and additional office space. PCI didn't disclose the cost of that expansion.
More recently, about a year ago, PCI said it would spend $100 million to beef up its aseptic liquid fill-finish manufacturing operations in Bedford, New Hampshire, to include a 50,000-square-foot building to house an aseptic fill-finish line with a fully isolated containment system. In addition, the project added twin lyophilizers with the capacity to fill 400 vials per minute, the company said.