It's been a banner year for the once humdrum business of manufacturing drugs, particularly vaccines. Billions have been spent ramping up facilities for Covid-19 jabs, while individual CDMOs have expanded their facilities, apparently anticipating demand or responding to a government-led push to onshore drug manufacturing.Now Baxter Biopharma Solutions, the CDMO wing of the many-armed healthcare giant Baxter, is getting in on the game. On Tuesday, they announced plans to spend $50 million to expand their flagship, 600,000 square-foot facility in Bloomington, IN.The facility is already used for manufacturing for 25 different biopharmas, the company said. The new expansion will add a 25,000 square-foot warehouse and 100 new jobs.The space will feature classic "fill-finish" capacity, the kind the government has been trying to bring online in the US over the past 9 months: a filling line for flexible line plastic containers, a high-speed syringe filling line that can handle 600 units per minute, and a high-speed, automated inspection unit.Construction is underway and should be completed by 2022, Baxter said, at which point they will begin taking contracts from biopharma companies.The blueprint comes just two weeks after CDMO August Bioservices blueprinted a 60,000 square foot sterile injectable facility in an apparent bid to win over large drugmakers seeking to onshore their manufacturing back to the US. Cambrex also announced this month plans for a $50 million plant dedicated to on-shoring small molecule production.Baxter last made headlines in 2016, when the company paid $16 million to settle federal claims that they distributed "adulterated" vaccines from a mold-stricken plant. In 2017, they bought Indian generic injectable maker Claris Lifesciences for $625 million, adding three manufacturing sites and 11 products in the process.
