A scientific site on Tyneside is supporting the production of vaccines after expanding its manufacturing facilities in the North East.
Parker Bioscience Filtration, part of the global Parker Hannifin group, has invested into its facilities at Birtley, Gateshead, to meet increased demand from vaccine producers.
The plant is seeing increasing demand for specialist single-use manifolds - tubing that is used in the vaccine manufacturing process.
It says it can expand its current production of the devices if demand continues to increase, having completed investment in the Birtley plant in 2019 which included new manufacturing and testing facilities, extended laboratories and new cleanrooms, plus state-of-the-art office and conferencing spaces.
The site also houses a 600sqm (6,450sqft) cleanroom facility which is dedicated to the manufacture of single-use assemblies for biopharmaceutical operations.
The investment programme has also seen the launch of The SciLog Suite, which provides personnel from across the biopharma sector with the opportunity to do interactive demonstrations with Parker Bioscience Filtration’s systems and run trials to determine how the equipment can be used to optimise their processes.
Kris Holmes, general manager of Parker Bioscience Filtration, said: “The overall investment in our facilities has made our Birtley premises one of the most modern manufacturing sites for integrated bioprocessing solutions in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).
“Our extensive manifold manufacturing capacity enables us to play a key role in the vaccine manufacturing supply chain in EMEA and we are delighted to be able to support the biopharmaceutical industry at a critical time, as operations scale-up to meet the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic.”
Parker Bioscience Filtration has sites in Birtley and California, and has a long history of working with the international food and drink sector on filtration solutions.
The company also designs, supplies and delivers systems for the pharmaceutical sector, providing systems that speed-up development times and increase efficiency and safety.
The North East is already playing a major role in the supply of coronavirus vaccines in the UK and further afield, with the Fujifilm Diosynth plant at Billingham and the GSK plant at Barnard Castle both involved in the production of the Novavax jab.
