JHL Biotech Opens New Single-Use Biopharmaceutical Facility in China

*Updated May 11, 2016

Following JHL Biotech’s opening of a FlexFactory flexible manufacturing facility in Hsinchu, Taiwan in 2014, the company opened a second manufacturing location in Wuhan, China on May 10, 2016. According to the company, with the addition of the new Wuhan facility, JHL Biotech will now hold the largest volume of single-use cell-culture capacity in all of Asia.

The Wuhan facility-which is a KUBio facility that was erected in just 18 months-will be a site for the manufacture of biosimilars and monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and will allow the company to respond to local need for complex therapeutics. According to a GE Healthcare spokesperson, the new facility will be the first KUBio that has been built, and JHL are the first customers to have purchased a KUBio facility.

The initiative to grow more local biomanufacturing sites is in alignment with China’s State Council’s action plan, centered around the mantra “Made in China in 2025.” Commented Racho Jordanov, CEO and co-founder of JHL Biotech, in a press release, "JHL Biotech’s mission is to make quality medicines affordable to more people, and we believe one of the greatest areas of need is in Asia. It was important to us to establish our scale-up manufacturing capacity in Asia with a manufacturing facility in China capable of producing biologics to a world-class standard.”

The Hsinchu facility and the Wuhan location share similar equipment. The JHL Wuhan site will manufacture up to 100 kg of mAbs per year in 2000-L single-use bioreactors. Initially, four 2000-L bioreactors have been installed, totaling a capacity of 8000 L. "The main service spine of the building supports today’s KUBio as well as offering the capacity to plug in a second KUBio, should it be required to meet potential increase in demand in the future," Jordanov told this publication. "JHL has also discussed adding a fill-finish plant to the site."

The Hsinchu site is a process development site and had two 500-L capacity bioreactors installed-but because it is a GE FlexFactory, this capacity could be expanded to four 500-L bioreactors in the future, if required, noted Jordanov.

Source: JHL Biotech