GE Healthcare announces tenfold capacity increase for powdered cell culture media

GE Healthcare Life Sciences has announced an increase of tenfold in its annual production capacity of powdered cell culture media at its Austrian facility.

The newly built manufacturing suite, based in the company’s Pasching site, will strengthen the company’s product supply for biopharmaceutical customers based in Europe. Further to this capacity increase, GE has also announced it is doubling its powdered cell culture media manufacturing capacity in Logan, Utah.

“The biopharmaceutical industry is focusing even more on security of supply and consistent quality of the key technologies and materials used in their manufacturing processes,” revealed Olivier Loeillot, general manager, BioProcess, GE Healthcare Life Sciences. “The capacity increase in Pasching helps us to meet the growing customer demand in Europe for powdered cell culture media, which is a continued trend in more mature biopharmaceutical markets due to their longer shelf-life and lower transportation and storage costs compared to liquid media. In Europe and in the US, the current uptake of powdered media is already between 60 and 70%.”

According to analysis from BCC Research, the cell culture media market was valued at $1.4 billion last year (2017) and is expected to grow at a rate of around eight percent over the next few years. This growth is reported to be mainly driven by the increase in demand for biopharmaceuticals, investment into R&D and favourable governmental policies.

GE’s cell culture media production facilities in Singapore and Logan, Utah have been certified according to ISO 22301:2012, the international standard for business continuity management systems. The Pasching, Austria facility is scheduled to be certified in 2018.