KBI Biopharma, a contract drug developer and manufacturer owned by JSR, announced a $150 million, 140,000-square-foot plant for commercial production of biologic drugs, with up to six 2,000-liter single-use bioreactors and more than 200 jobs. KBI co-invested with an unnamed drug company partner. About KBI KBI Biopharma was founded in 1996 and makes drugs under contract for other companies, with sites in Durham and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and Boulder, Colorado. JSR bought a majority of it in 2015, with CMIC and the state-backed fund INCJ also taking part. The plant The site is in Patriot Park, near Raleigh-Durham airport and KBI's existing labs. It opened in April 2022 and can run more than 70 commercial batches a year. It was designed with paperless batch records and real-time monitoring, and staffing was expected to reach 350 by the end of 2022.
