RAVENSBURG, Germany—At a cornerstone ceremony, Vetter Pharma International GmbH officially heralded the beginning of a project to create a new administration building at its Ravensburg Schuetzenstrasse site. Targeted for completion by the middle of 2019, the building is part of Vetter’s ongoing investment strategy to further develop sites and create additional manufacturing capacities.
When completed, the building will have a 25,000-square-meter (269,000-square-foot) state-of-the-art working environment. Using a contemporary office concept, the building will arrange work spaces in a process-oriented manner. This approach enables project-related and interdisciplinary project teams to work together closely on common tasks and facilitates cooperation between elements of the administrative departments and the development and manufacturing sites, also located at the Schuetzenstrasse site.
According to Vetter Managing Director Thomas Otto, “We are thrilled to be in a position to help create an additional part of Vetter’s future today. This new office building represents yet another milestone in our strategy for growth.”
Headquartered in Ravensburg, Germany, Vetter is a global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) for the development, aseptic filling and final packaging of injectables. Its production facilities are in Germany and the United States. The company offers services ranging from early development support, including clinical manufacturing, to commercial supply and various packaging solutions for vials, syringes and cartridges. Vetter’s customers range from small and midsize operations to the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical and biotech companies. The company offers manufacturing from early clinical development through commercial filling and final packaging of parenteral drugs. Vetter covers a broad range of complex compounds, including monoclonal antibodies, peptides and interferons.
In March, Vetter started operations in in its expanded Visual Inspection and Logistics Center in Ravensburg. The expansion, with a price tag of €100 million ($107 million), bundles capacity for product inspection and logistics in one site. Otto said the decision to move from the Holbeinstrasse site to Ravensburg Vetter West was based on the idea of establishing a single central warehouse, logistics services and final product inspection in one cutting-edge site. The site is located on approximately 50,000 square meters (538,000 square feet) of floor space and offers a 35,000-pallet warehouse capacity for storing pharmaceuticals in refrigerated or room-temperature conditions. The capacities for chest freezers, incubation chambers and constant climate chambers have been increased, as have the visual inspection capacities of filled units in either manual or automatic mode, enabling greater flexibility for individual market and customer needs.
The center also contains a support materials warehouse, a packaging-check laboratory and the company’s central archive. Additionally, the number of office workspaces was increased. By the end of 2017, the CDMO will relinquish its existing Holbeinstrasse site for visual inspection and logistics. Its employees and departments will gradually be relocated to Ravensburg Vetter West, resulting in a working staff of approximately 800 employees.
“As a leading solution provider, the CDMO recognizes its responsibility in supporting the needs of its customers in developing devices that contribute to increased patient safety, convenience and enhanced compliance,” Otto said. “We are continuously developing our manufacturing sites and techniques to prepare them for future needs and requirements. The upgrades are being driven by a changing healthcare market that is affected by issues such as ever-more complex molecules, smaller batch sizes and increasing regulatory requirements.”
