BD (NYSE:BDX) announced today that it will build a more than $200 million drug delivery device manufacturing facility in Spain.
The approximately $201.5 million (€165 million) high-tech manufacturing facility in Zaragoza, Spain, is expected to create up to 600 jobs by 2030, according to a news release.
In December, BD announced its plan to invest $1.2 billion over four years to expand and upgrade multiple drug-delivery facilities. The company said it intended to open the new facility and build upon its six existing sites in Columbus, Nebraska; Cuautitlán, Mexico; Fukushima, Japan; Le Pont-de-Claix, France; Swindon, United Kingdom; and Tatabánya, Hungary.
The company said the new site continues its operations in Spain, a country where BD has three production plants that produce 10 billion medical devices annually. Its facility in Fraga represents a key production site for manufacturing COVID-19 vaccine injection devices.
“BD’s new plant in Zaragoza will produce drug delivery devices, primarily for pharmaceutical companies that supply the European market with drugs in pre-fillable syringes such as vaccines and other biologic drugs,” BD Pharmaceutical Systems worldwide president Eric Borin said in the release. “This new plant will also add needed capacity to support major vaccination campaigns, such as the one currently taking place in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
BD plans to start construction on the Zaragoza plant late this year, with the site starting with a workforce of 150 people in an area of 86,000 square feet. The company anticipates that, by 2030, it will employ up to 600 people at the facility, which will be expanded to 323,000 square feet by then.
The company said the new facility will meet high sustainability and eco-efficiency standards while operating as a fully digital site. The facility is subject to the completion of an administration process.
“After the December 2020 announcement of BD’s intention to build a new plant in Europe, a detailed site location search process resulted in Zaragoza, Aragon being selected because of the optimal conditions offered by the region, the synergies that could be produced with BD’s Fraga facility, and the results and excellent performance of the plants that currently exist in Spain,” BD general director in Spain & Portugal Lourdes López said.
$1 = €0.818929
