Boehringer opens $800m plant with 185,000 L bioreactor capacity

Boehringer Ingelheim’s biologics facility in Vienna, Austria boasts 48 bioreactors to support both its own products and its CDMO business.

It has been six years in the making, but German drugmaker Boehringer Ingelheim inaugurated its latest site this week, opening the doors on its Large Scale Cell Culture (LSCC) biologics manufacturing plant in Vienna, Austria.

The facility boasts a total of 48 stainless-steel bioreactors at various scales, including nine 15,000 L tanks, along with digitalization and automation technologies, and artificial intelligence applications.

According to a spokesperson, the facility will serve both the manufacturing of the Boehringer Ingelheim biologics portfolio and those of customers through its BioXcellence contract manufacturing business. However, the exact allocation between the two businesses has not been divulged.

The plant is the single largest investment in the company’s history, costing €700 million ($809 million), up from the original €500 million announced in 2017.

This publication was previously told this investment is “crucial to expanding and strengthening our biopharmaceuticals network and will enable us to respond to the rapidly growing demand.”

It has also created 500 jobs, all of which we have been told have been filled.

The news is a boost to Boehringer Ingelheim’s biologics network, joining a microbial plant on the same site and mammalian cell culture plants in Biberach (Germany), Shanghai (China), and Fremont (US).

The video below was taken from BPI Europe 2017 and shows how the facility in Vienna was constructed)