Yahoo Finance Sigma-Aldrich (SIAL) Opens New Cell Culture Technical Center - Analyst Blog
Sigma-Aldrich Corporation SIAL has announced the inauguration of its Asia Pacific headquarters and the latest Cell Culture Technical Center in Singapore. The center is located at Biopolis Research Park to meet customer-specific requirements in the surrounding area and provide effective technical solutions.
According to Jason Apter, Vice President and Managing Director, Asia Pacific for Sigma-Aldrich, the company has partnered with certain biopharmaceutical companies to help them enhance their research and development efforts. Sigma-Aldrich thinks that it can also reduce the time and costs involved in manufacturing new as well as existing generic drugs, thus benefiting the biopharmaceutical companies.
The Technical Center mainly targets customers of Sigma-Aldrich’s SAFC Commercial business, helping them to develop biopharmaceutical applications. Moreover, with the new Cell Culture Technical Center, the company has brought together all the present commercial offices and technical laboratories in Singapore under a single location.
The facility will assist in meeting a broad range of customer requirements in the Asia Pacific region, starting from development projects, product support, trouble-shooting to application issues. The primary issues for which the center will provide assistance are cell culture media development and optimization services for customers engaged in biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing. It will also address pre-clinical media manufacturing through its Immediate Advantage (“IA”) service. The IA service helps in customizing the production of non-cGMP batches of material and their modifications, thus speeding up the process of development.
The Technical Center provides a suitable platform for the company to reach out to its Asian customers with its market-leading technical expertise as they try to develop and manufacture innovative biopharmaceutical products in this region, pushing new scientific boundaries.
Further, Sigma-Aldrich announced plans to build its own cGMP distribution center in Tuas. This center, scheduled to open by the end of 2015, will help the company to provide better services to both customer and distributors in Singapore, and across South East Asia (“SEA”).
This will be Sigma-Aldrich’s first distribution center in SEA that will strengthen its presence in the biopharmaceutical industry in the Asia Pacific. Additionally, it will provide best-in-class supply chain security and service to customers. Moreover, Sigma-Aldrich has adopted the objective of “In Asia for Asia” with the intent of promoting the cGMP certified distribution center. It has also formed strategic partnerships to abide by the strict regulatory requirements for biopharmaceutical manufacturing.
Singapore was the natural choice for Sigma-Aldrich’s regional headquarters, given the country's strategic location, strong economy, political stability and world-class infrastructure. This was a strategic move by Sigma-Aldrich to expand and strengthen its foothold in Asia.
Sigma-Aldrich currently carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).
Better-ranked companies in the specialty chemicals space include KMG Chemicals Inc. KMG, OM Group Inc. OMG and BioAmber Inc. BIOA. While KMG Chemicals and OM Group sport a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), BioAmber carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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