Catalent expanding again in Bloomington

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. (Inside INdiana Business) — New Jersey-based Catalent Inc. (NYSE: CTLT) is once again adding to its operations in Monroe County. The company is investing $14 million to acquire a facility in Bloomington it says will be used for early-phase clinical biologics formulation development and drug product fill and finish services.

Catalent has purchased the 23,000-square-foot building from Bloomington-based AB BioTechnologies Inc. The company says the facility includes a new flexible filling line that is capable of filling liquid and lyophilized vials, syringes and cartridges and also allows for faster manufacturing of clinical batches.

The facility will also include quality control laboratories and controlled temperature storage for biologic and sterile products. 

“The addition of this new small-scale filling capability underlines Catalent’s commitment to our customers with early stage programs looking to accelerate molecules into the clinic,” Mike Riley, region president of North American biologics for Catalent. “The filling line will also be fully leveraged as part of our OneBio offering, an integrated solution for drug substance and drug product development, manufacturing and clinical supply, enabling faster development timelines to Phase 1 clinical trials and beyond.”

Catalent says the new building will be fully integrated with its main Bloomington facility, where the company recently announced a $50 million investment to install a third high-speed vial filling line.

Catalent says the facility is expected to begin operations in January. It was not immediately known if any jobs would be created as a result of the expansion.

The company has made several investments over the past few years including a $14 million expansion to boost its biologics packaging capacity that was completed in April.