MOSCOW (MRC) -- Merck KGaA says it is investing a total of EUR40.0 million (USD48.5 million) to increase the production capacity of its facilities at Danvers, Massachusetts, and Jaffrey, New Hampshire, by the end of 2021 and in 2022, respectively, to meet "unprecedented demand" for products and services to customers developing lifesaving therapies, including COVID-19 vaccines, said Chemweek.
The two sites provide products and services for biopharmaceutical manufacturing, the company says. The total investment at Danvers is about EUR21 million and will add 6,000 square meters to the site's 11,000-square-meter facility used for single-use assembly operations, Merck says. The total investment at Jaffrey is about EUR18.5 million and will expand the existing 24,000-square-meter facility by 2,300 square meters, the company says.
"The global coronavirus pandemic has significantly increased demand for our single-use and virus-filtration technologies, which we are supplying to more than 50 different companies working on COVID-19 vaccine candidates," says Chris Ross, interim head/life science at Merck.
With these expansions, the total amount of investments announced by Merck in life sciences in 2020 exceeds EUR350 million, the company says. They include investments to enhance capabilities and capacity at Buchs, Switzerland; Carlsbad, California; Madison, Wisconsin; and Darmstadt, Germany.
As MRC informed earlier, Merck KGaA says it has entered a collaborative partnership with Siemens for the joint development of an overall process-control system for the automation of modular production of materials and products for the electronics, pharmaceutical, and life science industries.
As MRC informed earlier, Merck KGaA has presented its new sustainability strategy, with which it aims to integrate sustainability more deeply as an essential component of its corporate strategy. The main aims of the strategy are to develop sustainable science and technology, integrate sustainability into all the company's value chains by 2030, and achieve climate neutrality and reduce its resource consumption by 2040, Merck says. The company will report annually on the current implementation status of the strategy.
We remind that Russia's output of chemical products rose in September 2020 by 6.7% year on year. At the same time, production of basic chemicals increased by 6.1% year on year in the first nine months of 2020, according to Rosstat's data. According to the Federal State Statistics Service of the Russian Federation, polymers in primary form accounted for the greatest increase in the January-September output. Last month's production of primary polymers decreased to 852,000 tonnes from 888,000 tonnes in August due to shutdowns in Tomsk, Ufa and Kazan. Overall output of polymers in primary form totalled 7,480,000 tonnes over the stated period, up by 16.4% year on year.
Headquartered in Darmstadt, Germany, Merck opened an OLED application center in Pyeongtaek, Korea, in 2015. Merck Korea now has 11 operation sites and some 1,200 employees and operates businesses in functional materials, health care and life sciences. The functional materials business encompasses advance materials for information technology products such as displays and semiconductors. It also includes cosmetics and paints for automobiles.
Its health care business involves pharmaceutical and medical devices for treatments of cancer, multiple sclerosis and infertility. The life sciences business deals in an extensive portfolio of over 300,000 products used for protein research, cell biology, antibodies, water purification and microbiome tests.
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