Catalent Pharma Solutions has unveiled plans to quadruple cold chain capacity at its existing clinical supply storage and distribution facility in Shanghai, China. The expansion is in response to growing customer demand from both domestic and multinational pharmaceutical sponsors and contract research organizations (CROs).

Expansion work at the site is underway and is due to be fully validated and operational by the end of the year. Opened in 2013, the facility was the first in China to provide end-to-end clinical supply solutions from clinical supply management, comparator/reference product sourcing and primary packaging to clinical storage and distribution.

The cGMP site is also validated to support biologics requiring refrigerated and frozen supply chain management and currently offers 15º/25ºC controlled room temperature, 2º/8ºC refrigerated, -20ºC frozen and -80ºC ultra-low frozen storage environments. The new expansion includes the quadrupling of existing cold chain storage capacity, as well as new dedicated receiving, dispatch and packaging areas.

“In the two years since the facility opened, we have seen a sharp increase in the utilization of the site, with a shift towards more trials involving biologics and temperature sensitive drugs,” said Wetteny Joseph, president of clinical supply services, Catalent.

Being located in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone, which is within close proximity of the Pudong and Hongqiao international airports, and other key transport links across China and the broader Asia Pacific region, Catalent’s Shanghai site benefits from expedited customs and clearance processes, as well as the potential elimination of duties, taxes and transportation delays.

Catalent has also added further packaging and low temperature storage capacity to its Singapore facility, citing the need to support secondary packaging and innovative and flexible clinical supply services. “This expansion continues our strategic growth program within the Asia-Pacific region, and follows our announcement in June 2015, that we are increasing capacity at our Singapore clinical supply facility by 60%,” said Mr. Joseph.