Novasep launched its previous facilities in Shanghai in 2006, but outgrew the site while the company doubled its staff to almost 50 employees between 2010 and 2012. The new expanded facilities includes 800 m2 containing a new laboratory, piloting and FAT testing areas.
Novasep says the facility will help it meet ever-increasing Chinese and East Asian demand. The company has seen continued growth in demand for its design and supply of purification technologies and integrated processes in batch and continuous membrane filtration, ion exchange and chromatography. Novasep is also facing increasingly challenging purification requests, driven by the need for life science industries to reach maximum throughput with low capital and production costs and minimum environmental impact. The increased innovation capabilities at the Shanghai site reportedly will allow Novasep to meet this demand and improve the 50 purification processes already developed by Novasep in Shanghai. These facilities will also add to Novasep’s existing sites in France, US, Germany, Belgium and the Bahamas. "Novasep, as the leader in the supply of purification processes for industrial biotech and biopharmaceutical applications in China, has ensured that its supply capabilities can satisfy ever increasing demands in China and East Asia," claimed Antoine Baule, president of Novasep Process, the biomolecule division of Novasep. "With food and feed industry ingredient volumes rising above 100,000 tons per year in some Chinese productions, this requires more cost effective and environmentally friendly processes, and strong engineering capabilities,” said Jean de Lataillade, general manager of Novasep Asia. “The Shanghai site will further enable Novasep to compete globally in both low volume pharma markets, as well as large volume industrial biotech markets.” Novesep works in the field of industrial biotech including fructose, starch sweeteners, organic acids, amino acids, bulk antibiotics, nucleotides, polyols, white biotech applications, functional ingredients including whey products, oligosaccharides and omega 3; biopharmaceuticals including recombinant proteins, peptides and biosimilars including monoclonal antibodies and insulin; and pharmaceuticals, especially optical isomers and certain anti-cancer APIs.