Irvine Scientific opens new Industrial Cell Culture media production facility in Tokyo, Japan

Irvine Scientific, a member of JX Holdings group, announced today the opening of a new Industrial Cell Culture media production facility in Tokyo, Japan. The new facility, located in Saitama prefecture, will manufacture the Company's cell culture media for production of biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, monoclonal antibodies and other media's used in pharmaceuticals, medicines, and research. The facility is being commissioned and validated as completely animal component free (ACF) manufacturing facility.

Irvine Scientific is one of the only media providers worldwide that is regulated and adheres to both ISO and FDA regulations. The Irvine Scientific Tokyo facility is designed for maximum efficiency and to meet the highest quality ISO standards.

The 1,720 square meter facility will house state-of-the-art formulation and packaging equipment, and will utilize milling and blending equipment designed and built to Irvine Scientific specifications by L.B. Bohle, GmbH, of Ennigerloh, Germany. The second manufacturing facility has been designed for expansion without disruption of production as the Irvine Scientific grows. The Tokyo facility will further secure Irvine Scientific's flexible customer-centric approach to media supply. The Tokyo facility provides expanded capacity and system redundancy to our existing 75,000 sq foot facility in Santa Ana, CA. The Tokyo facility will benefit our customers with increased stability of product supply. The Saitama plants location can easily serve Irvine Scientific customers in Japan as well as the expanding markets of Asia. The facility will have the capacity to produce 600,000 KG of powdered media per year. This doubles Irvine Scientific's current powder manufacturing capacity at Santa Ana, CA and will bring the total capacity to over 1 million KG / year. Irvine is using identical equipment and consistent raw materials, which are being controlled to assure that the media produced in either location adheres to agreed upon customer expectations and regulatory quality system requirements. The facility is expected to begin delivering its first product to customers in March 2011.