Swiss specialty chemicals company Lonza has acquired Shire’s clinical-stage mammalian manufacturing site in Hayward, California, USA, boosting its cGMP capacity and supplementing existing assets in Slough, UK. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

The facility has operated as a multiproduct cGMP plant since 1990 and comprises 1,000-liter and 2,000-liter bioreactors as well as downstream capabilities. The site employs more than 100 personnel, all of whom will be able to continue in their role with Lonza, which said it will begin customer batches in 2018.

“The additional capacity will support the needs of our customers to secure manufacture for their products’ complete lifecycle across Lonza’s global manufacturing network,” said Karen Fallen, vice president, business unit head, clinical development at Lonza. Matt Walker, Shire’s head of technical operations, added that Lonza will serve as a partner to Shire, managing the manufacture and supply of reagents used in a number of Shire products.

In separate news, Lonza announced last month that it had broken ground on the construction of a large-scale biologics plant in Visp, Switzerland. The mammalian cell culture facility for producing monoclonal antibodies, which will be built and operated in partnership with French drugmaker Sanofi, is expected to be fully operational by 2020.