Porsolt triples capacity with new preclinical facility
The new 5,500sqm facility, which is in Le Genest-Saint-Isle, northern France, triples the firm’s animal housing capacity for rodents, dogs and mini-pigs. It also provides more than 230 rooms for surgical experimentation.
Martine Lemaire, Porsolt's senior director of commercial and business development, set out the motivation for building the new facility, telling Outsourcing-Pharma.com that: “Our clients expressed the need for long-term partnerships with service providers offering an extended range of services.
“We recognized the need to offer to our clients the possibility to continue to collaborate with us on a larger scale. We also considered this [new facility as an] important investment and a way to access new markets and clientele.”
Energy and fight
The contract research organisation (CRO) began work on the new facility in 2008 at the very height of the global economic downturn – which has to be considered a bold move at a time when pharma clients were cancelling or delaying preclinical development investment.
But, while Lemaire admitted it had been a challenging time to choose to expand capacity, she said that Porsolt was always confident of the success of the project.
“The situation was not easy for such an ambitious project, but I never doubted that it would be completed,” she said, commending the energy and ‘fight’ the Porsolt team had devoted to establishing the new facility.
Market recovery
Lemaire also spoke about pharmaceutical industry demand for preclinical services and was generally upbeat about the state of the market.
“After a couple of difficult years and low demand, the activity in the last few months is encouraging. Demand is certainly coming back, although time for decision-talking is still relatively slow.
And, the facility seems to be having an impact according to Lemaire, who said: “The feedback and new contracts we have received from clients that have visited our new research centre confirm that it answers their expectations,” she said, adding that “we are looking forward to a continuing increase in our work load in 2012. "
