Olivia Friett, editor of European Pharmaceutical Manufacturer was invited to Hillerød, Denmark to see the first expansion of FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies’ facilities. Olivia spoke to Lars Peterson, president and CEO, about the expansion.
Fujifilm
Have there been any challenges during the first phase of the site expansion?
This project was decided in early 2020 and then COVID ran through the entire globe.
I think we started the project very well, but COVID created a big supply chain issue. The flow of a great number of goods was stopped because of Suez channel issues as well as other supply chain issues. So, that meant a lot of the equipment that normally will be completely tested and finalised on sites where the manufacturer is, could not be done.
Half of the equipment came here, not tested, and that means they needed to test it in the facility, which is not what the schedule was set up for. That created challenges throughout the entire project, meaning they fell behind.
When you have such big projects like this, every day just is a nightmare if you don't hit every milestone, and they didn't. So, it was like a catch-up game that we eventually caught up with and have been proud to recently open and become operational.
What steps are you taking to ensure a seamless transition as it becomes operational?
Many steps. The most important step is that a number of people that already joined the startup phase of the project were moved over from the existing facility.
We are blending new hires, because of course, when you build a new site like this, you need to almost double your operational staff, but if you only hired new people for that, that would have taken a long time. We moved a lot of experienced people over and hired new people into the old facilities.
This is basically just an extension of the existing facility. Everything's working exactly the same way. So, you can very easily utilise people across everything, that makes it much more seamless to get up and running.
Could you elaborate more on your renewable energy initiative?
The history of this site was one that operated on fossil fuels. While we have not changed completely to renewables, we will do that in our next phase.
We have created an energy agreement where we will have completely renewable energy. We will start with wind energy to support the entire electrical footprint for the site. And we also are looking at significant water consumption reduction programs. I think we have programs to reduce by 30% of the current usage of water.
How does the partners for the planet initiative align with the company's overall growth?
I think this site aligns completely. Denmark has a very aggressive sustainable footprint.
A lot of energy here is maybe easier to get agreements with versus being in countries where this footprint is not in place. So, it's been easier to be aggressive on getting to a CO2 neutral footprint, which they're working very hard on, and we'll get there before the Fujifilm Corporation’s global plans, hopefully by 2030.
Fujifilm Corporation has a net zero commitment by 2040 globally. So, from a Fujifilm Corporation perspective, this site is very much a leading light globally in terms of meeting those.
What would you say this expansion means for Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies?
For Fujifilm, it means basically double the large-scale manufacturing footprint and also double what we can say large scale output is, which is a very significant business for Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies and also for Fujifilm Corporation. We know that because investors are always asking, they almost know all the numbers about this facility down there.
To put some numbers on it, we're going from a capacity within the network of around 140,000 litres capacity for manufacturing of antibody drugs. By the end of expansion projects we've announced, it's above 750,000 litres of capacity that we're aiming for.
Are there plans to further expand beyond your other facilities?
Beyond what has already been announced globally, in the US, we are looking at potential expansion options, but nothing has really been going through any approval process yet.