Sartorius expands manufacturing capacities in China and the UK

The expansions will enable the company's local customers to test equipment directly at the manufacturing site

The company has opened a new customer interaction center (CIC) in the Shunyo District, Beijing, marking the completion of the first phase of expanding the existing production facility.

The additional 7,500 sq. ft of space will enable the company's Chinese customers to test, validate and adjust the functionalities of upstream (for example, bioreactors) and downstream (for example, tangential flow filtration systems) equipment, prior to installation at their factories.

Previously, these customers had to travel to Germany or India to run factory acceptance tests (FATs).

"China is already one of the biggest markets for Sartorius and will become even more important in the next years," said Edison Zhu, Head of Operations BPS Systems China at Sartorius. 

This news comes hot on the heels of the company's announcement on Friday that it is expanding in the UK by relocating to a new facility for downstream processing equipment.

The new 58,000-sq. ft Havant site will increase, simplify and accelerate the company's capacity to produce customised equipment that supports downstream processing. It will house engineers with biochemical, electrical and mechanical backgrounds who will design and manufacture a range of systems that are crucial for manufacturing injectable drugs used to treat cancer and diabetes and for producing vaccines to prevent the spread of viruses, for example, chromatography columns and time- and cost-saving tangential flow filtration systems.

Similar to the new CIC in China, the new UK facility offers a dedicated customer test lab to demonstrate the functionality of Sartorius equipment.

These expansions are in line with the company's plans to invest in excess of €400 million in expanding capacities around the world during 2021.