High-tech production facility for Fujifilm

At Fujifilm in Tilburg, a factory building for packaging photo rolls is transformed into a high-tech production facility for making cell culture media. Fujifilm engaged Kuijpers to design and construct a clean room facility in the building. The production facility was completed in February 2021.

Cell culture media are powders and liquids that pharmacists use in making new drugs. Their production places very high demands on the environment. Fujifilm selected Kuijpers to construct a cleanroom (1,725 square meters) for this purpose in accordance with ISO 14644 standards. The cleanroom stands completely on its own within the construction shell that Fujifilm itself takes care of.

Multidisciplinary team

In late 2019, Kuijpers became the main contractor for this project and provided a multidisciplinary team of controlled environments specialists, building automation experts, security systems experts, electrical and mechanical professionals and air treatment experts. Partner Brecon Group (specialist in clean room building systems) was led by Kuijpers. In a construction team, the assignment was then tackled integrally. In doing so, Kuijpers translated the basic design that was already in place into a functional design that met the extremely high demands.

"With a tight schedule and a design that was not yet completely ready, we made use of Kuijpers' knowledge, experience and flexibility from day one," John Manteleers, manager Engineering & IT of Fujifilm Tilburg, looks back. That quickly proved to be worth a lot, especially organizationally. Eric Vogels, Kuijpers project director: "Because of the short lead time, we decided to start ordering supplies already during the design phase. That is not without risks of course, but thanks to our experience we dared to do so." The current long delivery times and even completely stalled deliveries due to the corona crisis also prompted us to start working on order lists early on.

"With Kuijpers, we brought in a contractor who knows anything about complex projects and who knows how to translate a basic design into a functional design."

Safe and healthy

Good organization was also a must on the construction site. Not only to monitor the progress of the project, but also to keep an eye on the health and safety of employees on the construction site. Together with Fujifilm, Kuijpers was on top of things to keep the project on track under these conditions. As a result, there were no major delays, and after a year of design and construction, completion was in sight at the end of 2020.

And that is to the liking of Sander Vermeulen, Director of Business Development at Fujifilm. "The general public knows us from photo rolls. But we have been active in the healthcare and biopharmaceutical sectors for years. We now have cell culture media production sites in Japan and the United States, among others. We notice that the pressure on the production capacity of drug ingredients worldwide is enormous, partly due to the recent development of corona vaccines. From Tilburg, we will serve the European market with our production. Our goal: to be among the top cell culture media factories in Europe. This naturally requires a top production facility and we have now realized this, together with Kuijpers."

Translated from "https://www.kuijpers.nl/referenties/hightech-productiefaciliteit-voor-fujifilm"