SK Pharmteco has announced a two-phase, $35 million investment to boost both capacity and capabilities at its SK Biotek subsidiary’s manufacturing plant at Swords, Dublin. This is due online in 2024, the campus’s 60th anniversary as a small molecule API manufacture, and will lead to a 50% total increase in capacity.

AlzChem, the only supplier of speciality nitriles outside China, has completed a €12 million expansion that took 15 months and will increase capacity by 50%. This is particularly targeted at the pharmaceutical and agrochemical markets and is expected to lead to additional sales of €10-20 million/year, depending on the product mix.

As part of its expansion plans for this year, Charnwood Molecular, a UK-based pre-clinical discovery CRO to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology market, has become the sole occupier of a three-storey laboratory facility at Charnwood Campus in Loughborough. This is being funded with support from European private equity fund Synova, which recently took a stake in the company.

Small molecule CDMO Cambrex is spending $50 million to expand its mid- and large-scale API manufacturing capacity in Charles City, Iowa. This is the sixth major investment at the site in the past eight years and follows on from a recent, smaller expansion at the site in Karlskroga, Sweden.

Swiss-based CDMO Carbogen Amcis has announced two major expansion projects over the next four years at a cost of over €90 million. This follows six years of constant growth for the company, a subsidiary of the Dishman Group, and aims to address current market demand.

CordenPharma has announced the addition of a 3,000-litre solid-phase peptide synthesis (SPPS) vessel at its GMP API facility in Boulder, Colorado. This site, which was formerly owned by Roche, already has a 10,000-litre SPPS vessel and a 100 cm high-pressure reverse phase purification column, and is claimed to have the largest capacity of any peptide API facility.

Cabot has broken ground on its carbon black capacity expansion project in Cilegon, Indonesia. This phase of the project will add approximately 80,000 tonnes/year of capacity for the regional market, where demand is growing by 4-5%/year. It is expected to be completed in 2021.

This is part of global capacity expansion and debottlenecking project that Cabot announced in May 2018 to increase capacity by 300,000 tonnes/year. The company said that it “has made significant progress” towards this target.