Simtra BioPharma to Begin $250M Expansion at Indianapolis Plant
Phase one of the new facility is scheduled to be up and running by mid-2025.
Simtra BioPharma Solutions will undertake a $250 million-plus expansion of its sterile fill/finish manufacturing campus in Bloomington, Ind., the contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) announced.
This announcement follows the 2023 acquisition of Simtra by Advent International, one of the largest global private equity investors, and Warburg Pincus, a global growth investor, for a reported $4.25 billion.
The 150,000-square-foot building will house two high-speed automated isolator syringe fill lines and a new high-speed isolator vial line equipped with three 322-square-foot (30-square-meter) lyophilizers. The expansion will also include a dedicated clinical line equipped to support Simtra’s growing development/clinical business.
The clinical line is scheduled to be ready for new projects by the summer of 2025. It will provide the Bloomington campus the ability to better accommodate projects that are in early phases of development (phase I or II) and keep these projects onsite as they scale up for commercialization.
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Construction of the new building is planned to start in June and expected to take two years to complete, allowing for GMP readiness in late 2026.
A report from local outlet B Square Bulletin described the Simtra campus as being on Curry Pike just outside Bloomington city limits, near Monroe County Airport.
There is a broad increase in demand and need for injectable manufacturing in therapeutic classes such as GLP-1 drugs and product categories such as Antibody-Drug-Conjugates as well as overall continued growth of the oncology pipeline, Franco Negron, CEO of Simtra BioPharma Solutions, commented in a prepared statement.
Simtra reported that this expansion follows a $100 million-plus investment in its Halle/Westfalen, Germany, site in 2021 for the construction of a new building housing a high-speed syringe line and a vial line equipped with four lyophilizers.
Drugs on a budget
Last November, Fujifilm’s Diosynth Biotechnologies signed Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen Supply Group as the first tenant at the company’s $2 billion biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Holly Springs, N.C. The 1 million-square-foot project is slated for completion in 2025.
In a recent report on life science trends to watch this year, JLL highlighted (among other trends) the need for more manufacturing space as potential breakthrough technologies like GLP-1 agonists for weight loss and antibody-drug conjugates come to market.
On the other side of the coin, however, JLL noted that with venture capital retrenching, biopharma companies are trying hard to make the most of their space and their portfolios.
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