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Staff at Parker Bioscience Filtration’s Birtley, UK site have stepped up to meet increasing demand from the biopharmaceutical sector during the Coronavirus pandemic.

The efforts of technical and manufacturing personnel at the Birtley site have helped to strengthen the biopharmaceutical manufacturing supply chain in EMEA, with single-use assemblies and vital components such as specialist single-use manifolds being manufactured at the facility.

NEPIC member Parker Bioscience Filtration designs, supplies and delivers systems for both upstream and downstream pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing. It provides integrated bioprocessing solutions that speed-up development times and increase efficiency and safety to enable reproducible quality.

A major phased investment programme, completed at the Birtley site in 2019, has enabled Parker Bioscience Filtration to increase its manufacturing capabilities and capacity in the UK.
The investment programme included new manufacturing and testing facilities, extended laboratories and new clean rooms, plus state-of-the-art office and conferencing spaces.

A reliable supply of single-use manifolds is vital for the integrity and productivity of large-scale single-use bioprocessing operations, and Parker Bioscience Filtration has the capacity to further increase its current manifold manufacturing output at Birtley, should demand from companies such as vaccine manufacturers necessitate this.

Parker Bioscience Filtration is part of Parker Hannifin, the global leader in motion and control technologies.

Incorporating the expertise from the now Parker-owned brands of SciLog® and domnick hunter, the company combines filtration, single-use fluid-handling systems and sensors into automated single-use solutions.

Parker Bioscience Filtration’s Birtley site houses a 600m2 ISO Class 7 cleanroom facility, which is dedicated to the manufacture of single-use assemblies for biopharmaceutical operations.

The company manufactures specialist components including filtration capsules for integration into single-use assemblies for all bioprocessing stages, single-use sensors, tubing, bioprocessing containers, retainers, junctions and connectors.

The investment programme also saw the launch of The SciLog® Suite, which provides personnel from across the biopharma sector with the opportunity to undertake interactive demonstrations with Parker Bioscience Filtration’s automated single-use bioprocessing systems and run trials to determine how the equipment can be used to optimize their processes. The facility is also used for in-depth training of operators and engineers.

The SciLog® Suite features the SciLog® SciPure FD system, which automates, standardizes and encloses final bulk filtration and dispense operations. Biopharmaceutical manufacturers are able to use this testing facility to gain a greater understanding of how their bulk filling processes could be improved through enclosure and automation.

The SciLog® Suite also allows demonstration and trials to be conducted on SciLog® TFF system for tangential flow filtration operations and the SciLog® NFF system for normal flow filtration operations.
Companies who use the facility can draw on the extensive expertise of Parker Bioscience Filtration’s product specialists, single-use system design engineers and its Technical Support Group.

Kris Holmes, General Manager of Parker Bioscience Filtration, said:

“Our extensive manifold manufacturing capacity enables us to play a key role in the vaccine manufacturing supply chain in EMEA and we are delighted to be able to support the biopharmaceutical industry at a critical time, as operations scale up to meet the challenges of the Coronavirus pandemic.

“Special thanks go to our dedicated and highly experienced personnel, who have worked extremely hard throughout a challenging period to ensure that customers both in the UK and overseas have access to the single-use systems, components and technical support they need to continue operating successfully.”

Parker Bioscience Filtration, with its sites in Birtley and Oxnard, California, supports customers both locally and globally in improving process control, efficiency and supply chain security throughout their production and packaging processes.

The company has five decades of experience in working with the international food and beverage sector – with specialist expertise in the dairy, brewing, bottled water and wine industries – and offers a wide range of filtration solutions that ensure product quality, while maintaining the lowest cost of ownership.

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