Media Release
Basel, 7 June, 2005
Roche
dedicates world’s largest PCR-manufacturing facility in New Jersey
New
site for 800 people; investment of more than 150 million US dollars
Roche
today dedicated its new Manufacturing Center in Branchburg, New Jersey, USA. The facility is the largest
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) manufacturing site in the world and was constructed to manufacture and
supply Roche Diagnostics’ industry-leading products based on its Nobel-prize winning PCR technology.
Roche has spent more than 150 million US dollars for construction of the new structure and renovations
to the existing facility. The new plant allows Roche Diagnostics to consolidate the production currently
operating in various places in New Jersey to one centralized Branchburg location. The new 26,000 square
meter facility will employ up to 800 people, creating approximately 350 new jobs. Foundational work
on the new facility began in April 2003.
“It is of utmost importance
to have a facility that can respond to the increasing market demand for our PCR products,” said Franz
B. Humer, Chairman and CEO of the Roche Group. “Within the diagnostics industry, the existing as well
as the new PCR tests of Roche Diagnostics like the FDA-cleared AmpliChip CYP450 Test belong to the most
innovative products. We anticipate that the consolidation of the manufacturing processes and the integration
of the New Jersey activities of Roche Diagnostics into one facility will greatly benefit our business
practice as we continue to support the role of PCR technology in changing medicine.”
Together
with Franz B. Humer and Heino von Prondzynski, CEO Division Roche Diagnostics and Member of Roche’s
Corporate Executive Committee, further Roche executives, as well as key customers and government representatives,
joined the dedication ceremony this morning. It included Mike Ferguson, Congressman from New Jersey,
“Kip” Bateman, New Jersey Assemblyman, and Robert Bouwman, Mayor of Branchburg.
“I
applaud Roche’s continued commitment to the Branchburg area. To have such a prestigious technology like
PCR right here in our backyard is quite an honor. Roche has also truly been a good corporate neighbor
since they came to our community back in 1991 in many regards,” commented Christopher ‘Kip’ Bateman,
Assemblyman, Somerset County, New Jersey, who is a life-long resident of Branchburg.
In
Branchburg, Roche Molecular Diagnostics, a business area of Roche Diagnostics with its headquarters
in Pleasanton (California), produces PCR kits for the research, diagnostic and blood screening markets.
The diagnostic kits are used for the detection and quantification of infectious diseases such as HIV,
Hepatitis and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as for blood screening, including the West Nile
Virus kit. The production range also includes reagents for a variety of diagnostic platforms, including
microarray technology used in AmpliChip Tests. Overall, Branchburg produces approximately 140,000 kits
per month, which are distributed worldwide.
Over the last four years,
Roche Diagnostics has seen a 46 percent increase in production volumes of their test kits. As an example,
in the blood screening business alone, where Roche Diagnostics’ PCR-based tests are used to screen more
units of blood worldwide than any other nucleic acid test, their test kits have been used to test more
than 100 million blood donations.
About Roche
Headquartered
in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world’s leading research-focused healthcare groups in the
fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. As a supplier of innovative products and services for the
early detection, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease, the Group contributes on a broad range
of fronts to improving people’s health and quality of life. Roche is a world leader in diagnostics,
the leading supplier of medicines for cancer and transplantation and a market leader in virology. In
2004 sales by the Pharmaceuticals Division totalled 21.7 billion Swiss francs, while the Diagnostics
Division posted sales of 7.8 billion Swiss francs. Roche employs roughly 65,000 people in 150 countries
and has R&D agreements and strategic alliances with numerous partners, including majority ownership
interests in Genentech and Chugai. Additional information about the Roche Group is available on the
Internet (www.roche.com).
All trademarks used or mentioned in this release are protected by law.
Additional information
- Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR): www.roche.com/pages/facets/pcr_e.pdf
- Branchburg, New Jersey: www.branchburg.nj.us
- Roche Diagnostics: www.roche-diagnostics.com