Worcester Business Journal

4 Worcester Business Journal | April 26, 2021 | wbjournal.com C E N T R A L M AS S I N B R I E F Biomanufacturer planning $150M Boxborough facility V E R BAT I M COVID hope "The COVID year has also been about the power of hope; how together we offered support, how together we helped, how together we offered hope." Tim Garvin, president and CEO of the United Way of Central Massachusetts, discussing the nearly $18 million it helped funnel toward pandemic relief Personal cannabis experience "The overall feedback is [customers have] been looking for something like this, something that's more personal." Ross Bradshaw, owner of New Día cannabis dispensary in Worcester, discussing the company's announced expansion to Boston's Fenway neighborhood Legal banking "Most Americans live in states where some form of cannabis is legal, but because of outdated federal law, cannabis-related businesses are forced to operate in cash." Congressman Jim McGovern (D-Worcester), expressing his support for the SAFE Act of 2021, which would allow banks to do business with cannabis companies without fear of penalty and passed the House of Representatives in April A rranta Bio, a microbiome contract development and manufacturing organization, is planning a $150-million facility in Boxborough to drastically increase its capacity beyond its sites in Watertown and Florida. Arranta has begun work on the first phase of what will be a 130,000-square- foot biomanufacturing facility, a space so large it exceeds that of its two existing facilities combined. e company said it plans to employ more than 250 workers at the facility, with completion of the first phase set for early 2022. As a so-called CDMO, Watertown- based Arranta provides manufacturing space for drug, life science or other products for clients. Before the Boxborough announcement, it had already invested more than $100 million last year to expand its supply capacity in helping microbiome firms. About 400 companies are actively exploring the links between diseases and the microbiome – bacteria and viruses inside the body – in order to identify therapeutic targets, Arranta said. Arranta's Boxborough plans are the latest sign of quickly expanding biomanufacturing uses on the north and west outer stretches of Greater Boston, which in many cases are meant to complement thriving life science companies based in places like Boston and Cambridge. Central Mass. life sciences Another CDMO, the German firm BY GRANT WELKER Worcester Business Journal News Editor Vibalogics, announced last November it'll build a very similar sized facility in Boxborough: a $150-million building spanning 110,000 square feet. Vibalogics, which said it hoped to begin operations in the second half of this year, was selected last May by Janssen Pharmaceutical Cos., a Johnson & Johnson company, as one of its manufacturing partners for its investigational coronavirus vaccine. Nearby in Devens, pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb is expanding its facility by 244,000 square feet to manufacture a cell therapy for lymphoma patients that has achieved U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval. Boston development firm King Street Properties is planning a $500-million life sciences complex that would span 700,00 square feet and is aimed at helping Boston-area life sciences companies find accessible space for manufacturing. In March, a Cambridge firm developing fusion energy, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, said it'll build a $300-million, 47-acre site in Devens to test fusion energy to prove that fusion can work as a power source. at announcement came a few weeks aer Bio-Techne, a biotechnology company specializing in tools for life science research, said it had completed a 27,000-square-foot addition to its Devens building. PHOTO/COURTESY OF ARRANTA BIO W The proposed Arranta Bio facility in Boxborough

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