The expansion includes a new plant to produce the polylactic-glycolic acid copolymers next to the company’s existing Birmingham facility. The new unit is expected to come online in late 2018. Clean rooms and a laboratory for polymer contract research are also under construction.
In addition to investments at Birmingham, Evonik expects to open an applied technology laboratory for medical devices at Darmstadt, Germany by year-end. The company brought a PLGA plant online at Darmstadt in 2014, and is currently building another production line at the site. Another medical device lab opened in 2015 in Shanghai, China.
“We expect the global demand for biodegradable polymers to continue to grow in the coming years,” says Paul Spencer, Head of Biomaterials at Evonik’s Health Care Business Line. “With this in mind, we are currently investing to increase the capacity of our production facilities in order to serve our global customer base.”