Lonza will build a large-scale commercial spray-drying facility at its Bend site in Oregon, adding two PSD-4 units and extending an operation known for particle engineering into a larger manufacturing hub for clinical and commercial pharmaceutical programmes.
The facility is expected to be completed in 2029 and will initially create more than 80 jobs. Lonza describes the project as a significant capital investment but has not disclosed its financial value.
The expansion is intended to support spray-dried dispersions, or SDDs, used to improve the bioavailability of active pharmaceutical ingredients that dissolve poorly in water. Lonza says a significant share of molecules in current clinical pipelines requires some form of bioavailability enhancement, creating demand for specialist particle-engineering processes as candidates move towards commercial manufacture.
In a typical SDD process, an active ingredient and polymer are dissolved or dispersed in a solvent system before being atomised into a heated gas stream. Rapid evaporation produces engineered particles in which the drug can be maintained in a form that dissolves more readily than the untreated crystalline material.
The manufacturing difficulty lies in achieving that behaviour consistently. Feed composition, solvent selection, atomisation, inlet and outlet temperatures, gas flow, droplet size, drying rate, powder collection, and storage conditions can all affect the finished dispersion and its stability.
Christian Seufert, head of Advanced Synthesis at Lonza, said: “The growing number of complex drug molecules is increasing demand for advanced particle engineering technologies.”
The new Bend building will contain two PSD-4 spray-drying units and is designed to allow further capacity expansion if demand justifies it. Supporting work includes additional solvent-handling and storage infrastructure, energy-efficient utility and process systems, and enhanced emission-control technology intended to reduce overall facility energy demand.
Those supporting systems are central to the plant rather than secondary services. Pharmaceutical spray drying can involve substantial volumes of organic solvent, requiring controlled storage, transfer, ventilation, recovery, explosion protection, and emissions management around the process equipment.
Large dryers also consume significant thermal energy because substantial volumes of process gas must be heated and moved through the system. Utility efficiency therefore affects operating cost as well as environmental performance, particularly at commercial batch scale where campaigns may run for extended periods.
Bend already operates spray-drying and particle-engineering capabilities across development scales. Adding PSD-4 commercial equipment gives customers a more direct route from formulation work into larger manufacture without transferring immediately to a completely separate technology platform or organisation.
Technology transfer remains unavoidable as processes scale, but continuity can reduce some of the variables. Larger dryers change feed rates, residence times, heat and mass transfer, atomisation conditions, and powder-collection behaviour, so commercialisation still requires process development and validation even where the basic formulation is unchanged.
A contract development and manufacturing organisation earns part of its value by managing that transition. Pharmaceutical developers may have limited in-house spray-drying expertise, particularly when the technology is used to rescue a molecule whose poor solubility would otherwise prevent sufficient exposure in patients.
The commercial pressure grows if a clinical programme succeeds. Development equipment is designed to work with comparatively small quantities of valuable material, while an approved medicine may require repeatable manufacturing at volumes that alter the economics of solvent use, cleaning, analytical release, warehousing, and downstream dosage-form production.
Lonza says the new facility will support small molecules and other modalities, including biologics and mRNA where its particle-engineering technologies are applicable. The exact demand mix in 2029 will depend on customer pipelines, which gives the expandable design some value in a market where projects can accelerate or disappear following clinical and regulatory decisions.
The US location also feeds into a wider manufacturing trend. Pharmaceutical companies are reassessing where critical production steps sit within their supply chains, particularly where a specialist process has only a small number of qualified providers.
Building additional commercial spray-drying capacity in Oregon does not make a medicine domestically self-sufficient, because active ingredients, polymers, solvents, packaging, and other manufacturing stages may still cross borders. It does reduce the need to send one specialised processing step overseas for customers already developing products in the United States.
The 2029 completion date means none of this capacity is immediately available. Lonza still has to design and construct the facility, install and qualify the PSD-4 units, commission solvent and utility infrastructure, establish validated operating procedures, and bring customer processes onto the equipment.
That leaves a three-year execution period in which the growth thesis behind the investment has to survive contact with actual project pipelines. Poorly soluble molecules are unlikely to disappear; whether enough of them reach commercial manufacture to keep two large spray dryers busy is the more useful test of the Bend expansion.
For now, Lonza has committed to the infrastructure rather than simply announcing interest in the market. The next evidence will come from construction, qualification, and customer transfer activity as the Oregon site moves from development-scale particle engineering towards sustained commercial output.
