Sartorius Group has celebrated the official opening of its new laboratory building for biotechnology at its German location in Goettingen
Some 150 guests from the business, scientific and political communities accepted CEO and executive board chairman Joachim Kreuzburg's invitation to Sartorius College.
The guest of honour was Lower Saxony's prime minister Christian Wulff, who in addition to Arnold Picot, supervisory board chairman of Sartorius, addressed words of welcome to the attendees.
The senior executive director of the prestigious Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology, Prof Rainer Fischer, from Aachen, Germany, gave the celebratory address on the latest developments in the biopharmaceutical field.
After just eight months of construction, ultra-modern laboratories, pilot plant stations and offices have taken shape on five stories and covering a total area of some 3000m2.
With this new building, Sartorius is expanding its capacity for research and development in biotechnology by 60 percent.
"The new building is a further component of our strong focus on innovation," said Joachim Kreuzburg.
"In addition, it is visible proof of our confidence in the performance capabilities of our employees and in the potential of the Goettingen location".
Kreuzburg pointed out that since 2002, research and development spending by Sartorius has been increased by approximately 75 percent.
A good 80 percent of the budget is channeled into Goettingen every year, the group's main research location, according to Kreuzburg.
Employees' council chairman Uwe Bretthauer emphasised the close interlinkage between the jobs in research and production.
"If research is expanded in Goettingen, this is also good news for our employees in production and in related areas".
In the laboratories of the new building, new products and processes for the manufacture of biopharmaceuticals are to be developed.
In particular, developers are working on innovative disposable technologies that will contribute toward making complex production processes of pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers faster, more efficient, safer and more reliable.
In addition to the new labs for cell culture technology and virology, a process-scale test station was built in which customer-specific applications can be tested and optimized.
Sartorius primarily contracted construction companies from the region of Lower Saxony to build the new laboratory complex.
The topping-off ceremony was celebrated after four months on 15 December 2006.
