Amgen opens S$200m biologics plant in S’pore

SINGAPORE — United States biotechnology firm Amgen has become the latest biologics player to set up base in Singapore with the opening of its S$200 million production facility, as the Republic seeks to attract more of such “high-value” manufacturers to diversify and grow its economy.

“The manufacturing sector, which contributed close to 20 per cent of our GDP last year, is an important sector to Singapore. A strong manufacturing base will allow us to diversify our economy and make it more resilient. High-value manufacturing also creates good jobs for Singaporeans and stimulates demand for sophisticated services,” Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang said yesterday at the official opening of Amgen’s plant.

Located in Tuas Biomedical Park, the plant is the company’s first manufacturing facility in Asia and it will make a medicinal substance used in the treatment of bone conditions such as osteoporosis. Amgen plans to build a second facility on the same site to produce an active ingredient used for treating patients with multiple myeloma, a type of cancer.

Biologics is a field under the key biomedical industry, where medicines are made from living cells. Today, the industry has created more than 6,000 jobs here, of which over 80 per cent are filled by locals, Mr Lim said.

“Over the years, we have worked around our land, energy and manpower constraints by implementing innovative solutions in partnership with companies to raise productivity and resource efficiency … We will continue to invest in talent development, research and development, and in building up the capabilities of our local ecosystem to create a compelling value proposition for manufacturing companies to invest in Singapore,” he said.

Including Amgen, Singapore is now home to nine biologics manufacturing facilities, such as Baxter, Novartis and GSK Bio, with a total investment of more than S$3 billion so far.

Amgen’s Singapore head and vice-president for manufacturing Kimball Hall said yesterday the company is in the process of starting up the facility and the first commercial product is expected to hit the market by the end of 2016. She added that there are plans to increase the Singapore staff strength from the current 70 to 200 in two years.

The Tuas facility was built to be more innovative and efficient. It costs only a quarter of the capital cost and one-third of the operating expenses at conventional plants, uses 80 per cent less energy and water, but is still able to produce the same amount of products.

“This plant is expected to be more productive than existing facilities, optimise land use and improve on current levels of water and energy efficiency. It is aligned with Singapore’s efforts to achieve sustainable economic growth,” Mr Lim said.