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IDT Targets Asian Oligo Market with Opening of Singapore Plant
The SGD 6m ($4.7m) facility was completed earlier this year but officially opened its doors today to offer nucleic acid synthesis services to customers in South-East Asia.
Jean Huang, Marketing Manager of IDT Singapore took time out from the opening ceremony to speak with Outsourcing-Pharma.com:
“There is an increasing local demand in volume from both industry and academia for custom made oligonucleotides, used in genetic research,” she said. “With this Singapore facility we can turn around customers’ sequences by 12 the next day.”
This cuts the present speed of product delivery to Asia by several days, allowing “IDT to deliver longer pieces of DNA much quicker,” she continued.
Oligonucleotides are single strands of RNA or DNA molecules which can be manufactured for genetic research companies to be used in a number of applications, including microarrays and gene expression profiling.
"Additionally, customers in the Asia Pacific region will benefit from quick access to IDT products for real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) applications, also for which there is an increasing demand."
Gateway to Asia-Pacific
Singapore was an important choice of location for IDT, said Huang, being home to an increasingly growing pharmaceutical and research industry and serving as a base for South-East Asia.
The 939m2 GMP facility services customers throughout the region and from August will see New Zealand come aboard. In the next 3-6 months the firm expects to be able to offer its services to Australia, Japan and South Korea, conquering much of the Asia-Pacific region, according to Huang.
The new facility was welcomed by the Singapore Economic Development Board. Kevin Lai, Director of Biomedical Sciences, said: “Oligonucleotide manufacturing is knowledge-intensive, and requires a high proportion of skilled degree and diploma holders. This new investment will create excellent job opportunities for Singaporeans.”
In the original article we quoted Ms Huang as saying the new facility was GMP certified. We have now been informed by the firm the Singapore facility is not GMP certified at this time.
