Leanbio will raise investment in the new Sant Quirze del Vallès plant to 30 million

The Barcelona biotech ecosystem adds a new large facility among its prominent players. The biotechnology company Leanbio, founded in 2014 in Barcelona, reaches its tenth anniversary with the need to expand its production capacity for the development and manufacturing of biological and biosimilar products, given the growing demand from the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical sectors, both from multinationals and startups.

With this objective, the company is building a new biological plant in Sant Quirze del Vallès, with an investment of 20 million euros. The general director of Leanbio, Albert Font, highlights that it plans to add an additional ten million by 2030, which will be allocated to equipment. This figure is in addition to the six million euros they are investing to expand the production capacity of the biotechnology company, which operates from the Barcelona Science Park, located in Les Corts.

The new production plant will be a pioneer in the territory and will respond to "a very clear need of the biotechnology sector." This is because companies that require biological products are often forced to resort to companies located abroad or to produce them in delocalized factories.

The plant will be operational in 2025 and will house three production lines in its more than 3,500 square meters

The new factory in Sant Quirze contributes to getting closer to this goal. This will be the first installation of its kind within the Barcelona technological hub and its surroundings, and will be one of the most advanced in Europe. The plant will house three production lines in its more than 3,500 square meters. In them, Leanbio will have the capacity to manufacture both recombinant proteins and antibodies, intended for advanced therapies in the biopharmaceutical field. All with the aim of responding to a growing demand from a sector in which Leanbio has strategic agreements with large global companies.

The facilities, which will also include development laboratories and pilot production plants, will feature state-of-the-art equipment. With these, the company aims to expand its production of complex and essential drugs. Specifically, it will do so in three production lines with GMP good manufacturing practice certification, dedicated to working with mammalian cells, microbial cultures, and molecules for gene therapy.

The Sant Quirze plant will represent a fundamental advance for the company. It will allow for increased production and reduced times and costs in the development of technology, processes, and biological products for third parties carried out by Leanbio. In fact, the company manufactures and develops these products from initial stages to advanced stages. Thus, it covers all phases of the cycle of these biological products, starting with the development of cell strains and ending with their manufacture, including analytical development.

Leanbio will for now keep its team at the Barcelona Science Park, although the forecast is to unite the development and manufacturing teams at the new Sant Quirze plant. However, Font does not rule out maintaining some unit or office in the Barcelona complex, due to the advantages of being linked to the "main hub of Barcelona in Life Science".

European manufacturing

The plant, which will be fully operational in 2025, aims to become a European benchmark and represent a great strategic advance also at the state level. So much so, that the project has been selected within the State's Perte de Salud de Vanguardia (Vanguard Health Perte). The program's objective is to promote technological initiatives in the pharmaceutical sector, also taking into account sustainability criteria, and will provide nearly 2.2 million euros to Leanbio.

The company precisely prioritizes the development and manufacturing of medicines through sustainable processes. And it does so in a context where the pharmaceutical strategy of the European Union aims to incentivize production in member countries, especially with the aim of reducing the dependence on external suppliers that Covid-19 highlighted.

The pandemic arrived when Leanbio had been operating in Barcelona for five years. Its founders, Andreu Soldevila and Albert Font, launched it in 2014. Both doctors in biotechnology, they promoted it to provide comprehensive services in the development, scaling, and manufacturing of these biotechnological products. The company has invoiced five million euros this year, and expects revenue to increase to seven million next year. After the plant is fully operational, Font estimates that the figure will climb to 50 million in revenue by 2030.

This growth in revenue will also translate into the workforce. The company currently has 20 employees, which will increase to about thirty next year. The employees will more than double to reach between 50 and 60 when the new plant becomes operational in 2025. The business plan foresees that, by 2030, the company will have a workforce of more than one hundred employees.

The company has invoiced five million euros this year, and expects revenue to increase to seven million next year