GE Healthcare Life Sciences is increasing the annual production capacity of powdered cell culture media by tenfold in its facility in Pasching, Austria. The newly built manufacturing suite will help to strengthen product supply for biopharmaceutical companies in Europe. GE is also doubling its powdered cell culture media manufacturing capacity in Logan, UT and is expanding the site’s stability services offering to support biopharma companies with stability data on their custom media formulations.

GE has three cell culture media production facilities globally: Pasching, Austria; Tuas, Singapore that was opened in 2014 and in Logan, UT, where GE also has custom media capabilities.

Cell culture media is a critical ingredient in biopharmaceutical production, supporting the growth of cells. It is the fastest growing segment within the cell culture market valued at $1.4 billion in 2017. The estimated growth rate is around eight percent for the next few years.

GE is also running a major manufacturing transformation project at the Logan site using its Brilliant Manufacturing software suite that combines lean and advanced manufacturing with software analytics. For example, the new electronic batch record system is going to remove over seven million manual entries and substantially reduce the time required to conduct 100,000 internal batch record quality reviews annually.

The company says the digital solutions will also provide greater transparency for biopharmaceutical companies, as they will be receiving real-time data on their cell culture media, increasing their understanding and control over their overall manufacturing processes.

“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,” said 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 U.S., the current uptake of powdered media is already between 60 and 70 percent.”

GE’s cell culture media production facilities in Singapore and Logan, UT have been certified according to ISO 22301:2012, the international standard for business continuity management systems, which ensures that GE has a robust program in place to maintain business continuity, even under the most unforeseen and challenging conditions. The Pasching, Austria facility is scheduled to be certified in 2018.