Cytiva to open new manufacturing facility in Cardiff

Technology supplier to the life sciences industry Cytiva is opening a new manufacturing facility in Cardiff, Wales as parts of its global expansion plans.

Once completed, the site will be used to manufacture single-use bioprocessing technologies used to make vaccines and biopharmaceuticals. The site is part of a two-year £1.1 billion global expansion plan by Cytiva and Pall Corporation during which the companies are expanding manufacturing capacity at 13 of their global sites. Up to 250 new jobs will be created at the facility once it is finished, Cytiva has said.

Mary Blenn, vice president Global Supply Chain at Cytiva, says: “Since 2020, we have invested and significantly increased global capacity to address our customers’ growing needs. We continue to expand with new manufacturing sites, such as that in Cardiff. This facility also gives us an enhanced presence in the UK, allowing us to provide more regional options to our customers there.” 

Cytiva hopes that the site will help boost the UK’s regional manufacturing capacity for pharmaceuticals. Whilst the UK has a strong life sciences sector, a lack of domestic manufacturing means that scaling up can often happen offshore.

Inside the facility, Cytiva is installing energy meters to optimise electricity use and reduce overall consumption. Cytiva is also investigating the use of ‘dynamic’ cleanroom controls which could reduce power use by up to  60% and is hoping to run its neighbouring offcies at close to carbon neutral.

The facility will have six ISO 7 cleanrooms in operation by the end of 2022. The first cleanroom was installed and validated in nine months through Cytiva working with Connect 2 Cleanrooms, a global cleanroom design and build specialist. 

Joe Govier, CEO of Connect 2 Cleanrooms, said: “Drawing on our 20 years’ experience, our team  is proud to work with Cytiva to design, build and validate the cleanrooms in Cardiff. The drive for this project was qualification and scale. This work ultimately advances and accelerates biotherapeutics and it’s been a pleasure to work with Cytiva on this high-profile project.” 

Construction on five more cleanrooms will be completed later this year. When complete, the new site will help increase Cytiva’s global manufacturing capacity for single-use products by 20%.