Simtra BioPharma Solutions is investing $250 million-plus to expand its sterile fill-finish manufacturing campus. Franco Negron, CEO, Simtra BioPharma Solutions, outlined the expansion at the DCAT Member Company Announcement Forum held on March 18th, 2024, at DCAT Week. 

The company is investing $250-plus million to expand its sterile fill–finish manufacturing campus in Bloomington, Indiana. A new, 150,000-square-foot building will be constructed to house two high-speed automated isolator syringe fill lines and a new high-speed isolator vial line equipped with three 30-squar- meter lyophilizers. Each process suite in the new building will be fitted with dedicated formulation/compounding rooms. The expansion will also include the addition of a dedicated clinical line that will utilize existing facility infrastructure. The announcement of the planned expansion follows Simtra’s recent acquisition by Advent International, a global private equity investor, and Warburg Pincus, a global growth investor.

The clinical line is expected to be ready to onboard new projects by the summer of 2025. It will provide the Bloomington campus with 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. Construction of the new building is planned to begin in June 2024 and is anticipated to take two years to complete, allowing for GMP readiness in late 2026. In aggregate, the expansion is expected to create hundreds of new jobs in Bloomington.

This latest expansion follows a $100+ million investment in Simtra’s 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. GMP readiness is anticipated by the end of 2024.