YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
YOUR BUSINESS AUTHORITY
Springfield, MO
From its manufacturing hub in Springfield, ABEC Inc. serves pharmaceutical giants like Eli Lilly, Regeneron, and Johnson & Johnson with stainless steel manufacturing vessels. Its custom single-run bioreactor, produced in sizes up to 6,000 liters, has a disposable core that allows a quick change of its use with minimal cleaning.
SBJ: Could you please describe the functionality of the custom single-run bioreactor?
Matt Ryan, vice president of global services and head of ABEC’s Springfield plant: It uses a disposable container, and everything – including a mixer – is self-contained inside. This allows the process to be extremely customizable. If a change is needed, the disposable container allows faster changeover and faster cleaning, and boom – you’re ready to go immediately. That’s a huge change in the biopharmaceuticals industry.
SBJ: Why do you operate solely in the biopharmaceutical space?
Ryan: Biopharma has the most stringent documentation and requires the most stringent quality, and for us, it’s easier to maintain that high level than it is for us to come up and down and hit multiple levels for multiple industries.
SBJ: Why is it important for you to manufacture this product here in Missouri?
Ryan: Springfield, Missouri, has long been recognized as the stainless-steel capital of the world. We are proud to have highly skilled craftsmen whose expertise enables us to meet the precise specifications that are crucial to the biopharma industry. Their craftsmanship is essential to delivering a world-class product.
SBJ: Your employees make vessels that are used throughout the world to create medicines and vaccines that save lives. Do you think they have a sense of the magnitude of what they’re part of?
Ryan: In this industry, you can certainly see your impact immediately. We had a COVID vaccine producer in India during the midst of the pandemic, and it wasn’t a matter of if ABEC didn’t take the job someone else would step in and take it; no one else could meet the timeline that was requested. We jumped in and within six months had some equipment going to India that produced some lifesaving vaccines. Regardless of your feelings on COVID, with so many people living on top of each other, it undoubtedly saved lives, and it’s a credit to the great people that we have in Missouri. They busted their butts and worked overtime to make that happen. On top of the COVID vaccine, we’ve done stuff with a revolutionary Alzheimer’s medication, and we were on the cutting edge of that. Many of our folks here have had folks that were affected by Alzheimer’s in their family, and it was meaningful for them to be able to help in that way.
SBJ: It sounds like speed is of the essence.
Ryan: When these biopharmaceutical companies have a new drug in the pipeline that’s lifesaving and cutting-edge, they need to partner with someone who can help them in an extremely, extremely quick manner, and that’s one of the great things about ABEC: When you ask us to hit a date and we commit to that date, we do that. We partner with those guys to make sure that happens and we can help those companies achieve that quick execution.
Morgan Industrial Technology adding second facility to campus.
