Pharmaceuticals
Amgen to build new manufacturing plant in Rhode Island 16th April 2018
Amgen plans to build a new biomanufacturing plant at its campus in West Greenwich, Rhode Island. In January 2018, announced a five-year capital investment plan of $3.5 billion, which included committing up to $300-million to build a new manufacturing plant in the US.
The new facility will use Amgen’s biomanufacturing capabilities to manufacture products for the US and export markets. Amgen terms the plant as a “next-generation” biomanufacturing facility that will incorporate multiple technologies into a single facility. As such, the company says the facility has a smaller manufacturing footprint and is built in half the construction time with approximately one half of the operating cost of a traditional plant.
Amgen said its decision to locate the new plant in Rhode Island was selected based on the history of Amgen’s West Greenwich, Rhode Island manufacturing facility as well as incentivized by recent US tax reform. The biomanufacturing plant will be built on the current Amgen Rhode Island 75-acre campus and is expected to create approximately 150 additional manufacturing positions and approximately 200 construction and validation jobs.
The existing Amgen Rhode Island plant was licensed by the US Food and Drug Administration in September 2005 and houses mammalian protein manufacturing. The facility manufactures commercial and clinical bulk-drug substances. Amgen has invested more than $1.5 billion in its Rhode Island site, adding more than 500,000 square feet of manufacturing, utility, administrative, and laboratory space to the campus. There are 625 full-time staff members now employed at the Amgen Rhode Island campus.
Amgen opened its first next-generation biomanufacturing plant in Singapore in 2014. Within the plant, the equipment is portable, smaller and disposable, which provides flexibility and speed when manufacturing different medicines simultaneously, says Amgen.