The Life Science factory began large-scale production of powder cell culture media this week. It's a milestone that FUJIFILM Manufacturing Europe B.V. has been working toward since 2021. Before the production of cell culture media could start, the plant and the product had to be approved by several parties. That was a time consuming process, says Heidi Franken-Hultman who has been quality manager at this plant since the beginning: "The cell culture media we make are used by pharmaceutical companies for the development and production of drugs and vaccines. Therefore, it is important that the composition of the product is exactly right. For this reason, LSM has a strict quality system and is ISO 13485 certified. Recently, we made several small-scale test batches so various customers could analyse them. Our analyses had already shown that our products met the requirements. Nevertheless, we still had to get approval from the customers before we could start producing for them."
Now that the approval is in place, Heidi expects the first order to be ready in October. Within the factory, enthusiasm is high. "We've worked hard for this for two years. The fact that we can now really start production is very exciting. Everyone is proud," she shares.
"Currently, with this first order, we are almost at our maximum production capacity for powder cell culture media," says director Sander Vermeulen. "This will remain the case these coming months. That’s why we immediately started several projects to investigate how we can increase capacity. LSM to the Max, we call it internally. Currently, there is more demand on the European market than can be produced within Europe. As a result, products are still being transported from the United States to Europe in support of LSM. Our goal is to increase production towards 2028 and thereby contribute to drug development production at European pharmacies and to a more sustainable product through less transportation as well as our CO2 neutral production line."