Asymchem Announces $20MM Investment in New Dunhua Commercial Manufacturing Facility

TIANJIN, China, Feb. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Informex 2012 -- Asymchem Laboratories (Tianjin) Co. Ltd., a leading custom contract manufacturer serving the pharmaceutical industry, today announced the introduction of a brand new large scale manufacturing facility located in Dunhua, P.R. China. The new facility, located in the Jilin province, will operate under the name Jilin Asymchem Laboratories Co. Ltd. It was built to meet an annual demand for commercial projects  > 5 MT and will serve to expand Asymchem's capabilities in high volume processing and back-end ingredient and intermediate production.  Asymchem invested approximately $20MM USD in the facility construction between 2009 and 2011. A further $12MM in investment is slated at the 35 acre Dunhua site between 2012 and 2014 in preparation for additional downstream commercial projects.

"Asymchem will continually look towards investing in world-class facilities and new technology developments as a strategy for success. We believe that this is the primary path forward in maintaining competitiveness as the global market evens out across the international and domestic Chinese intermediates and API markets," said Dr. Hao Hong, CEO of Asymchem.

The new facility will be able to accommodate high volume processes as a standalone service, as well as back-end integration for starting materials or intermediates that will then be further processed in the existing Tianjin and Fuxin Asymchem facilities. Phase 1 completion of the Dunhua manufacturing facility included the addition of 5000-20,000L vessels for the limited cGMP manufacture of raw materials to intermediates. This will quickly be followed by the completion of Phase 2 in July 2012, where the installation of a second module will allow for a total capacity of 532m3. The facility will be completed by a Phase 3 construction, scheduled for October 2012, which will increase capability through GMP manufacturing of APIs and API intermediates.

Asymchem customers will benefit from the addition of the Dunhua facility in many ways. Most notably, the facility will allow for new commercial projects to get started, as well as allowing for more efficient housing of large scale projects. The new facility will directly create an expansion of capacity at the existing Asymchem sites as they will now be able to relocate portions of large volume projects that were previously absorbing the available resources.

"Due to exceptional customer demand, we found that we had exhausted the resources at our other locations. As a result, we realized that we needed to have larger scale cGMP capabilities at this new site. Based on our plans, the facility will support both existing and new Contract Manufacturing business as well as working to establish Asymchem as a top tier player in the global custom development and manufacturing markets," Hong commented. He further noted, "The location of the site offers direct access to the most reputable Chinese producers and feedstocks, as well as a talented local labor pool. Overall, the strategic addition of the Dunhua facility has received great interest and it is encouraging to see that new opportunities are presenting themselves as a result of it."

To learn more about Asymchem and the new Dunhua facility, please visit: www.asymchem.com.

About the Asymchem Group

Asymchem is a leading research-based contract manufacturer of intermediates, API's and Drug Products for the pharmaceutical industry with four R&D and Production sites in China. With a diverse range of capabilities ranging from the medchem scale synthesis of complex molecules to commercial scale production of API's, Asymchem provides a fully integrated contract manufacturing solution to customers. For more information about Asymchem, please visit our website at www.asymchem.com.

SOURCE Asymchem Laboratories (Tianjin) Co. Ltd.