MilliporeSigma continues SU expansion with €130m France investment

The facility in Molsheim, France will see increased capacity for the manufacturing of MilliporeSigma’s Mobius single-use assemblies and create 800 jobs.

The €130 million ($131 million) investment, the largest ever in the 50-year history of the site, will significantly increase capacity for Mobius single-use products within the portfolio of Merck KGaA’s life sciences services business – known as MilliporeSigma in North America.

“Molsheim is our largest Life Science campus in France. We have the expertise in-house and the space to build the cleanrooms to manufacture single-use (SU) assemblies. The Molsheim site has unique features that make it the right place to host this activity in Europe,” company spokesman Gangolf Schrimpf told BioProcess Insider.

The Molsheim, France facility. Image c/o Google

“The site already hosts the management of single-use Hardware and Software, as well as the manufacturing of NovaSeptum (a single-use sampling system). This, coupled with strong experience for production in the required cleanroom environment and the proven experience in leading large projects, reinforces this choice.”

3,500 square meters of clean rooms, administrative building and new logistics warehouse are set to be operational by the end of 2024, with full production to be ramped up through 2028. By then the firm says more than 800 jobs will have been created.

According to Schrimpf, this investment plan marks the third phase of German Merck’s industrialization of the Mobius Europe project at the Molsheim site, located west of Strasbourg.

“In 2021, we announced the initial investment into our Molsheim site, with €25 million for single-use assemblies Fast Track Phases 1 and 2, adding 350 jobs. One of these lines opened in 2021, and two more are now under construction.”

The third phase also represents the continuation of global capacity expansions in response to rising demand for single-use assemblies, triggered in part by industry’s mobilization in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In April, we announced a €100/$110 million investment into single-use assemblies in Wuxi, China, which will be operational by 2024. Their Line3 had also opened in 2021.”

The company also has a sites in Danvers, Massachusetts that produces single-use components, which has been subject to major expansions over the past few years.