"Over the last few years, more and more biological drugs and vaccines are being manufactured utilizing the single use platform. This has created incredible demand for our SUT products," said Michel Lagarde, executive vice president of Thermo Fisher Scientific. "The site in Nashville will be critical in Thermo Fisher's global network to continue to support the biopharma industry's work in developing life-saving biologics and vaccines." 

The Nashville site is part of Thermo Fisher's now more than $650 million capital investment to expand its bioprocessing production capabilities across 11 manufacturing sites in North America, Europe and Asia. Additional capacity will be added in 2021 with the completion of expansion projects in Logan, Utah, Suzhou, China, and a new SUT manufacturing site in Singapore. This additional capacity in the SUT network supports global customers as the company's manufacturing strategy utilizes equivalent processes and procedures to manufacture SUT products of consistent quality, form, fit and function worldwide.

The $650 million investment program also expands global production capabilities in additional bioprocessing manufacturing networks. Capacity expansion projects in Grand Island, N.Y., Miami, Fla., and Inchinnan, Scotland are tracking to accelerated timelines to increase production capacity for Gibco cell culture media, supplements, and process liquids as well as the manufacturing of customer-owned proprietary media formulations. Thermo Fisher's purification network, which specializes in the production of process-scale chromatography resins for a variety of applications, including vaccines and gene therapies, continues to progress in capacity expansion efforts at its POROS resin manufacturing site in Bedford, Mass. and is nearing completion of the first phase of construction at its new site in Chelmsford, Mass.