Wisconsin Welcomes SAFC Pharma's Investment for Construction of $31 Million High-Potency APIs CMO Plant

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Reported by Annette Kreuger, Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--SAFC Pharma (Madison, Wisconsin) is preparing to start manufacturing later this month in a newly constructed $31 million plant in Verona, Wisconsin. SAFC Pharma is a division of life-science company Sigma-Aldrich (NASDAQ:SIAL) (St. Louis, Missouri). The 51,000-square-foot Verona site will be used to produce high-potency active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs).

APIs are the component that makes a finished drug product effective. SAFC Pharma is a contract manufacturer (CMO) that will deliver these APIs to approximately 80 companies that will use them in the production process for a number of drugs, with a targeted focus on oncology drugs used in the treatment of cancer. Highly toxic in nature, the production of these high-potency APIs requires stringent safety measures that were implemented into the plant's design.

Madison's Flad & Associates designed the new facility. Safety measures include chemical-resistant epoxy on the floors and "blast panels" on the walls to protect against sudden changes in pressure. The air pressure is closely monitored, and fresh air is pumped in up to 15 times an hour in certain rooms. Air that has been exposed to certain chemicals is also sent through 55-gallon carbon filters that are similar to common water filters.

On the manufacturing end, the site features six glass-lined steel reactors ranging from 500 to 2,000 gallons in size, affording SAFC larger production batches than what is currently available at its existing 70,000-square-foot APIs plant located at 645 Science Drive in the Madison Research Park. Founded as Tetrionics by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers in 1989, the company was acquired in 2004 by Sigma-Aldrich to form SAFC Pharma.

For the past several years, SAFC has made a number of capital investments at the Madison site. The company invested $15 million in 2004 to expand the site by 30,000 square feet. The most recent Madison project was a $4.5 million expansion that was completed in 2008 for the addition of a 1,200-square-foot cGMP dedicated large-scale kilo lab, equipped with two 400-liter pilot plant reactors, two 100-liter portable jacketed reactors and a Bruker D8 advance x-ray diffractometer.

SAFC tapped Vogel Brothers Building Company (Madison) to build the new plant in Verona, which will initially employ 15 people, eventually rising to 50 employees. Construction began in 2008, and the plant was completed late last year. Validation and exhaustive testing of the plant has pushed out actual operation until mid-April. Financing for the plant was aided in part by a $292,000 tax credit package provided by the state of Wisconsin.

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