Afton Scientific Plans $200M Plant Expansion & 200 New Jobs

CDMO, Afton Scientific, is investing $200 mn to expand its sterile injectables manufacturing facility in Charlottesville, Virginia to significantly boost production capacity of which will create 200 new jobs. The project aims to strengthen Afton’s position in the sterile manufacturing market and support both current and future clients with enhanced capabilities for high-demand sterile products.

The following article originally appeared in Fierce Pharma.

Afton Scientific, a CDMO, plans to shell out $200 million to expand its manufacturing plant in Charlottesville, Virginia, as part of a project that includes hiring 200 new workers.

The company, which was founded in 1991, specializes in sterile vials and aseptic filling services. The project will expand Afton Scientific’s current 35,000 square feet of warehouse, lab and administrative space on about four acres just outside of Charlottesville, according to an Oct. 2 press release from the Virginia Economic Development Partnership.

With the expansion, the company will be able to add “newer manufacturing technologies” to develop more medical therapies, the VEDP release said.

The projected completion of the expansion wasn’t disclosed. Earlier this year, Afton Scientific received a majority investment of an undisclosed amount from the private equity firm Arlington Capital Partners.

“Afton Scientific is thrilled about our expansion in Central Virginia, where we’ve grown the company since day one,” Thomas Thorpe, the company’s founder and chief executive, said in the release. “The involvement of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership and Albemarle County, and the Commonwealth’s support for local businesses was critical to our ability to bring advanced manufacturing jobs and economic growth to the area.”

The Virginia Economic Development Partnership worked with Albemarle County and the Central Virginia Partnership to secure the project.

The biopharma industry has been busy this year expanding manufacturing capacity to meet growing demands.

Last week alone, Ferring Pharmaceuticals opened a new global manufacturing hub in Kuopio, Finland, to help produce drug substance for Adstiladrin, which is the first gene therapy to target high-risk and non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) in patients who no longer respond to therapy.

That news dropped around the same time that Swedish CDMO Recipharm inked a deal with Exela Pharma Sciences to get access to the latter company's North Carolina manufacturing facility that Exela is in the process of expanding.

Additionally, Johnson & Johnson announced it would spend $2 billion to build a biologics plant in North Carolina; Piramal Pharma Solutions unveiled an $80 million expansion of its sterile injectables manufacturing facility in Lexington, Kentucky; and SK pharmteco said it was investing $260M to construct its fifth production site in Korea, this one in Sejong focused on making small molecules and peptides.

Besides those announcements, Eli Lilly made a major splash with its new $4.5 billion "Medicines Foundry" project reveal in Indiana.

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