December 15, 2020 – Thermo Fisher Scientific (Waltham, MA) has expanded its pharma services footprint with two new state-of-the-art facilities in Rheinfelden and Weil am Rhein, Germany.
The new sites will bring much-needed clinical supply chain continuity and specialized cold chain and cryogenic expertise across Europe and globally, Thermo Fisher Scientific says.
These facilities feature innovative and highly automated technologies to optimize efficiency and quality across the pharma services supply chain. The Rheinfelden site opens in late December 2020 and the Weil am Rhein site will open in January 2021.
The current clinical supply chain and logistics market in Europe is expected to double by 2025 and more than triple by 2030. Approximately 4,000 clinical trials are conducted each year in Europe, which is 20% of the global clinical trials market, the company says.
In Rheinfelden, the new 86,000-square-foot/8,000-square-meter facility significantly increases the company’s footprint for secondary packaging, storage, logistics and distribution of clinical supplies to investigator sites across Europe. Featuring highly automated technology in a fully scalable, mixed-use space, the site will serve as a strategic logistics hub for shipping by road or air and its central location will help expedite clinical trial therapies to patients.
In Weil am Rhein, the new 9,600-square-foot/890-square-meter cryocenter provides specialized ultra-low-temperature, cryogenic storage and cold chain expertise for clinical supply chain needs for cell and gene-based therapies, including COVID-19 vaccine candidates. With deep expertise in end-to-end cold chain management, the cryocenter will support ultra-low temperature storage, packaging, labeling, and distribution required by vaccine and cell and gene therapy innovators. The site will feature -80°C freezers, liquid nitrogen (LN2) cryogenic storage tanks and walk-in 2-8°C and -20°C cold storage technology.