GSK Launches New Pharmaceutical Production Facilities to Speed Up Production

The new GSK pharmaceutical production facility is expected to produce anemia and HIV drugs faster

GlaxoSmithKline plc. opened two new pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in Singapore on July 5, 2019, and expanded one of the pharmaceutical production facilities on its Jurong site. GSK said in a recent press release that the pharmaceutical facility developments will enable the site to “accelerate the supply of new breakthrough medicines to patients globally”.

Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing (right) at the launch of GSK’s new pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Pioneer on Jul 5, 2019.

One of the new pharmaceutical production facilities will first develop Daprodustat, an oral treatment for anaemia associated with chronic kidney disease. It will be produced via a process called continuous manufacturing, which requires far fewer annual interventions that traditional batch manufacturing. The continuous manufacturing process is expected to reduce production time, expediting access to medicine for patients around the globe. The GSK expansion to their pharmaceutical production facility will enable faster production of active pharmaceutical ingredients used in HIV medicinal products.

“Advanced manufacturing systems are pivotal for GSK to stay at the forefront of the pharmaceutical manufacturing sector,” said Mr Lim Hock Heng, vice-president and site director at GSK’s Pharmaceuticals Supply Chain Singapore. “Further investment in digital manufacturing operations and processes will allow GSK to ensure efficient and high-quality production of our medicines.”

At the grand launch of the GSK Pharmaceutical Production Facilty, Chan Chun Sing (Trade and Industry Minister) noted that companies in the biomedical sector are now operating in an environment of precision medicine, tailored and custom-made for the individual. Singapore will distinguish itself from the competition by adhering to collaboration between companies, economic agencies and government agencies.

The kind of investment that you make in Singapore will never be recovered in a year or two. You will require a sustained presence, a predictable environment, an environment that protects your IP and an environment that enables you to try new things. In order to achieve that, we need trust and collaboration between the Government, economic agencies and GSK. It will be the same kind of trust and collaboration that we will offer to all others in the biomedical industry.

– Chan Chun Sing

Unions are a Part of the Ecosystem in the TripartiteRelationship

“If workers are left behind, then we will face in Singapore the same challenges that people face elsewhere, which is that workers will start to resist change,” he said. “If workers and unions start to resist change then there is no way that we can accomplish what we want to do together. We can build all the nice facilities, we can have all the good government and business collaborations but it will never work without the last ingredient,” added Mr Chan.