A former North East Company of the Year has completed work on a £16m genetics centre.
Northumberland’s Merit, which won the top prize at the North East Business Awards in 2018, has doubled the capacity of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult’s manufacturing centre in Stevenage, Hertfordshire.
Merit used its offsite technology and specialist expertise in delivering controlled cleanroom environments to engineer pre-assembled modules at its manufacturing centre in Cramlington, Northumberland.
This reduced the impact of works as well as overall build time, allowing existing manufacturing at the Stevenage site to continue without interruption.
Tony Wells, managing director at Merit, said: “Our close collaboration with the team at CGT Catapult was key to the successful delivery of this complex project.
“We worked alongside them throughout the programme using our proven expertise in next generation cleanroom manufacturing technology and advanced offsite fabrication capabilities to deliver high-quality cleanrooms that meet the stringent standards of the technical specification.”
The centre is backed by more than £75m of funding from sources including the Innovate UK, the Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the European Regional Development Fund.
It is providing the infrastructure and expertise to enable companies to develop manufacturing capabilities and systems for large scale, commercial cell and gene therapy supply. Companies currently collaborating at the centre are Adaptimmune, Autolus, Cell Medica, Freeline Therapeutics and TCR2 Therapeutics.
Keith Thompson, CEO at the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult, said: “We would like to thank Merit for supporting the build out of this phase, it has been rapid using pre-prepared fallow space and off-site prefabricated building techniques.
“Thanks to their expertise the new capacity will come online quickly, leveraging the existing MHRA licences, installed quality and operational systems alongside the expertise developed by the Catapult and our collaborators at the centre.”
Merit is one of the UK’s leading engineering and construction specialistsm, with previous projects having included work on the Royal Albert Hall, the British Antarctic Survey and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory at Didcot.
