NIBRT & Emerson collaborate to prepare biopharma workforce for digitisation

Global technology and engineering company, Emerson, and Ireland’s National Institute of Bioprocessing Research and Training (NIBRT) have announced a collaboration to help prepare the Irish biopharma workforce for digitisation.

The collaboration will bring Emerson’s DeltaV distributed control system to NIBRT’s Dublin facility, where the next-generation of workers are trained, to help prepare students for automation technologies at the forefront of manufacturing digitisation.

“NIBRT is leading the way in helping Ireland, its universities, and Europe meet the demand for the skilled biopharmaceutical manufacturing workforce the industry needs,” revealed Mike Train, executive president of Emerson Automation Solutions. “This collaboration reinforces Emerson’s commitment to support global workforce education, as well as the bioprocessing industry where our automation systems have become the industry standard.”

“We are delighted to collaborate with Emerson, which is providing its best-in-class control and automation solutions for the NIBRT pilot plant. We look forward to delivering innovative training and education to our clients using the Emerson platform to help the biopharma industry gain the many advantages from increased digitisation and automation of core manufacturing processes,” added Dominic Carolan, CEO of NIBRT.

Commenting on the announcement, Martin Shanahan, CEO of the IDA Ireland, said: “The biopharmaceutical industry is extremely important to Ireland, and is worth over €40 billion in annual exports. It is essential that we continue to provide the appropriately skilled workforce capable of operating these state-of-the-art processing plants for many years to come. Emerson’s significant investment will help us support this continuously evolving industry.”

This collaboration follows the NIBRT study in 2016 which highlighted that more than half of biopharma manufacturers involved in the study found recruitment and development of bioprocess engineers difficult.