SINGAPORE, April 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Sigma-Aldrich
Corporation (NASDAQ: SIAL), a leading Life Science and High
Technology company, today announced the opening of its Asia Pacific headquarters and state-of-the-art
Cell Culture Technical Center in Singapore. Located at
Biopolis Research Park, the facility will provide customized
support to meet customer needs, leveraging the Company's industry
leading scientific capabilities.
"Our new Technical Center will significantly enhance our ability
to support our customers in the region more quickly and effectively
by providing local technical solutions that are customized to meet
their needs," said Jason Apter, Vice
President and Managing Director, Asia
Pacific for Sigma-Aldrich. "We are partnering with
biopharmaceutical companies that are looking to increase the
efficiency of their R&D efforts, working with them to reduce
the time-to-market, cost and risk in developing both new drugs and
generic versions of existing drugs."
The facility brings existing commercial offices and production
laboratories in Singapore into a
single location, together with the new Cell Culture Technical
Center. The Technical Center will primarily support the
customers of our SAFC® Commercial business in
biopharmaceutical development and manufacturing.
The Cell Culture Technical Center is designed to address a wide
range of needs of our customers in the Asia region, ranging from development
projects, product support, trouble-shooting and application issues.
Initially, the Technical Center will provide:
- Cell culture media development and optimization services for
customers engaged in biopharmaceutical development and
manufacturing, and
- Pre-clinical media manufacturing through our imMEDIAte
ADVANTAGE™ (IA) service which provides the ability to custom
produce non-cGMP batches of material and subsequent modifications
thereby speeding development and accelerating time-to-market.
"The development and manufacturing of biologics, whether
innovative new products or generic versions of existing drugs
(biosimilars), continues to be an attractive area of growth as our
customers continue pushing the boundaries of science and advancing
their ability to treat and cure disease," said Apter. "The
Technical Center is a state-of-the-art platform for the delivery of
our market-leading technical expertise in the region and through
this platform we will continue to expand our ability to support our
customers as they build up research and production capacity
themselves in this important region."
To further strengthen its presence in Asia Pacific and to better support customers
in the biopharmaceutical industry, Sigma-Aldrich has also announced
plans to construct its own cGMP distribution center in Tuas.
Expected to open at the end of this year, the distribution center
will enable Sigma-Aldrich to provide end-to-end services to its
customers and distributors in Singapore and across South East Asia (SEA).
This will be the Company's first fully-owned distribution center
in SEA and will significantly enhance its ability to provide
exceptional supply chain security and service to customers in the
region. Created with an 'In Asia for Asia' objective, the cGMP certified
distribution center will support strategic partnerships with
customers in the region, enabling them to meet the increasingly
stringent regulatory requirements for biopharmaceutical
manufacturing.
Mr. Kevin Lai, Executive Director
of Biomedical Sciences and Consumer Businesses of the Singapore
Economic Development Board (EDB) said, "Today, the fact that 9 of
the top 10 global pharmaceutical companies have a presence in
Singapore across manufacturing,
headquarters and R&D operations is testimony to the continued
growth of our pharmaceutical industry. We welcome Sigma-Aldrich's
new investment and are confident that this will further strengthen
our supporting ecosystem for biopharmaceutical manufacturing and
R&D."
Gilles Cottier, Executive Vice
President and President of SAFC Commercial, said, "The choice of
Singapore as Sigma-Aldrich's
regional headquarters was an obvious one, given the country's
strategic location, strong economy, political stability and
world-class infrastructure."
"Sigma-Aldrich is recognized as a leading global supplier to the
biopharmaceutical industry. Our investments in Singapore play a crucial role in our strategy
to better serve our regional customers and global players expanding
into Asia. The country's rapidly expanding biomedical
ecosystem provides Sigma-Aldrich with access to talent and
resources in an attractive and robust business environment like
Singapore," said Cottier.
Cautionary Statement: The foregoing release contains
forward-looking statements that can be identified by terminology
such as "will significantly enhance," "will continue to expand,"
"will support," "strategy" or similar expressions, or by expressed
or implied discussions regarding potential future revenues from
products derived therefrom. You should not place undue reliance on
these statements. Such forward-looking statements reflect the
current views of management regarding future events, and involve
known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may
cause actual results to be materially different from any future
results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such
statements. There can be no guarantee that the Technical Center or
cGMP distribution center will enable the Company to achieve any
particular levels of revenue in the future. In particular,
management's expectations regarding the Technical Center or the
cGMP distribution center could be affected by, among other things,
the Company's ability to obtain or maintain patent or other
proprietary intellectual property protection; competition in
general; government, industry and general public pricing pressures;
the impact that the foregoing factors could have on the values
attributed to the Company's assets and liabilities as recorded in
its consolidated balance sheet, and other risks and factors
referred to in Sigma-Aldrich's current Form 10-K on file with the
US Securities and Exchange Commission. Should one or more of these
risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying
assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially
from those anticipated, believed, estimated or expected.
Sigma-Aldrich is providing the information in this press release as
of this date and does not undertake any obligation to update any
forward-looking statements contained in this press release as a
result of new information, future events or otherwise.
About Sigma-Aldrich, a leading Life Science and
Technology company focused on enhancing human health and safety,
manufactures and distributes 296,000 chemicals, biochemicals and
other essential products to more than 1.4 million customers
globally in research and applied labs as well as in industrial and
commercial markets. With three distinct business units - Research,
Applied and SAFC Commercial - Sigma-Aldrich is committed
to enabling science to improve the quality of life. The Company
operates in 37 countries, has approximately 9,300 employees
worldwide and had sales of $2.79 billion in 2014. For
more information about Sigma-Aldrich, please visit its website
at www.sigma-aldrich.com.
©2015 Sigma-Aldrich Co. LLC. All rights reserved. Sigma-Aldrich,
SAFC and imMEDIAte ADVANTAGE are trademarks of Sigma-Aldrich Co.
LLC or its affiliates, registered in the U.S. and other
countries.
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SOURCE Sigma-Aldrich Corporation