MOSCOW (MRC) -- Merck KGaA says it plans to build an EUR18-million (USD20.6 million) laboratory facility at Buchs, Switzerland, to support its rapidly growing reference materials business, according to Chemweek.
The facility will include laboratory and office space in a three-story, 1,125-square-meter building, Merck says. Completion of construction is scheduled for December 2021 and the move to the facility is planned for early 2022, the company says. Merck anticipates that about two dozen jobs will be created.
One of Merck’s life science businesses' most important R&D centers, with 450 employees, has been in Buchs since 1950, the company says. Some of the site's employees will move from this "heavily utilized" building to the new facility, which will offer, to 40 employees, a more efficient way of working in R&D, analytical production, and quality control, Merck says.
“This new laboratory will allow us to continue to drive innovation in diagnostics and testing, and expand our research and development of analytical standards,” says Jean-Charles Wirth, head/applied solutions, life sciences at Merck.
As MRC wrote previously, Merck KGaA has announced the opening its M Lab Collaboration Center in Shanghai, China. Merck Innovation Hub, the first in China, started in late 2019, with the company announcing a 100 million renminbi (USD14 million) seed fund injected into the China Innovation Hub.
We remind that Merck celebrated the opening of its new packaging center at the science and technology company’s headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany, in October, 2018. The new 161,458-square-foot facility is dedicated to the packaging and shipping of Merck’s current portfolio of pharma medicines in more than 90 countries and help meet increasing patient needs for flagship medicines Glucophage, Concor and Euthyrox in the areas of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and thyroid disorders respectively. It will also provide capacity for potential future pharma products currently in clinical development such as evobrutinib in the area of neurology-immunology or tepotinib in the area of oncology.
According to MRC's DataScope report, PE imports to Russia dropped in January-June 2020 by 7% year on year to 328,000 tonnes. High density polyethylene (HDPE) accounted for the main decrease in imports. At the same time, PP imports into Russia rose in the first six months of 2020 by 21% year on year to 105,300 tonnes. Propylene homopolymer (homopolymer PP) accounted for the main increase in imports.
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