Lonza and Bio*One Capital to Construct Cell Culture Facility

Published on: December 20, 2006

Lonza Group Ltd. (Basel, Switzerland, www.lonza.com) and Bio*One Capital (Centros, Singapore, www.bio1capital.com) have signed a joint venture - Lonza Biologics Tuas - to build a large-scale mammalian cell culture facility in Singapore for the manufacture of commercial biopharmaceuticals. The facility will be Lonza’s second large-scale mammalian manufacturing plant in Singapore, and the third one globally. The capital investment will amount up to $350 million.

Lonza Biologics Tuas, located in Tuas Biomedical Park, will have up to four mammalian bioreactor trains, each with a flexible capacity of 1,000 L up to 20,000 L. The facility will become operational in 2011. When fully completed, Lonza Biologics Tuas expects to hire approximately 350 people for the operation.

In February 2006 Lonza and Bio*Capital entered into an initial joint venture under the name Lonza Biologics Singapore Pte Ltd., to build an 80,000 liter large-scale mammalian biopharmaceutical production facility. This facility became 100% owned by Lonza upon the signing of the Lonza Biologics Tuas joint venture. Genentech has an exclusive option to acquire the Lonza owned facility between 2007 and 2012.