Major Stability expansion affords greater capacity and service opportunities

Travis L. Emig, Vice President, BioPharma Chemistry, Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing

Eurofins BioPharma Product Testing has finalized an extensive 12,200 ft² expansion to its Stability Services offering at the Lancaster, PA, site. Building this new state-of-the-art facility enhancement project was in the works for approximately 12 months, and was completed with building occupancy in April 2022.

Immediately after occupancy began, the Eurofins Stability team and the Quality Engineering team commenced the process of performing initial validation of walk-in rooms and some pre-purchased reach-in chambers. This includes installation of all monitoring devices, full qualification (PQ) activities, and set-up for the continual mapping process we implement using the Siemens Desigo Environmental Monitoring System. Eurofins expects to start utilizing the new storage footprint by end of Q2 2022.

Stability Services was beginning to foresee some capacity concerns for some critical storage, especially room temperature and ultra-freezer conditions. This expansion affords Eurofins with extensive growth and additional service opportunities, especially in biologics/cold chain storage.

The first floor of the expansion focuses on supporting various conditions of cold chain samples/materials. Included are some unique features such as a cold room where reach in ultra-freezer chambers will reside, and several new “custom built” walk-in chambers ranging from -20C to -40C conditions.

The second floor space allows for expansion of both ICH and special condition chambers for specialized client requests, at elevated temperatures, as well as a tremendous area for room temperature / warehouse storage.

The expansion specifics include:

• An additional 2250 cu ft. of storage at 5°C ± 3°C.
• 1000 cu ft. of new storage at -30°C ± 5°C.
• 1000 cu ft. of new storage at -40°C ± 5°C.
• An additional 1000 cu ft. of storage at -20°C ± 5°C.
• Space for an additional 41 ultra-freezers contained within a room supplied with dry air and nominal temperature setting between 10°C – 15°C. This will allow for an additional 1066 cu ft. of freezer space (-70°C/-80°C) to be added over time.
• 6700 cu ft. of space for warehouse/room temperature storage.
• Space to add an additional 20 reach-in chambers to support client specific conditions (660 cu ft.).
• Additional office space to support increased staffing needed to support expected growth.

This expansion also opens the way for repurposing of some previously existing space, allowing Eurofins to double capacity for LN2 storage, with preliminary designs adding space for an additional 10 LN2 tanks. This internal effort specific to LN2 tank capacity should occur in early 2023.

Eurofins believes this expansion effort will allow capacity for our expected growth for a minimum of the next five years. It is also noteworthy that plans already exist for another expansion of this Stability building that would be as large as the current effort, which allows Eurofins to provide our customers with confidence that we will have the capacity and capability available to address any storage based needs now and into the future.