France
This €300 million investment announced last year and expected to be complete by this month will increase polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) capacity at Solvay's site in Tavaux to 35 kilotons – making it the largest PVDF production site in Europe to support the growth of the global lithium-ion battery market. Tavaux is located in the Jura department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in eastern France, near the Swiss border. PVDF is a thermoplastic fluoropolymer used as a lithium-ion binder and separator coating. The company also has increased PVDF capacity at its site in Changshu, China. And in November Solvay announced a JV with Orbia to create the largest capacity in North America for PVDF production. The total investment is estimated to be around $850 million, with part of that coming from a U.S. Department of Energy grant of $178 million to Solvay to build a facility in Augusta, Georgia. However, Solvay and Orbia said they intend to use two production sites, “one for raw materials and the other for finished product, located in the southeastern United States,” with both plants are expected to be fully operational by 2026. Of all the global PVDF expansions, Ilham Kadri, CEO of Solvay, said, “These investments extend our ambition to grow global sales to the automotive market from €800 million in 2021 to over €3 billion by 2030.”
Switzerland
In September the superstructure of CDMO ten23 health’s new large-scale sterile production facility was completed in Visp, Switzerland, as the plant is on track to be operational in 2024 for global commercial supplies of injectable drugs, said the company. The facility will have two sterile production lines and a total of 5,000 sq. m. (53,821 sq. ft.) of space to provide an additional 30+ million units/year of fill and finish commercial as well as clinical capacity. “A unique feature of the new facility is photovoltaic façade, covering the complete building exteriors, and being able to provide 45,000 kW per year,” the company said, in keeping with ten23 health's facilities in Basel and Visp, which already operate with 100% renewable energy. Where did the company get its name? “The numeric value for the number of molecules in a sample of one mol is called the Avogadro constant and equals 6.022 * 10 23,” the company explains. “The world is built from small units, and not a homogeneous mass.” Good to know.
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