Contract manufacturing giant Catalent has announced that it will set up a new biologics analytical center of excellence in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

The new plant will offer analytical development and testing services for biologics, including cell and gene therapies.

Catalent obtained a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) from the North Carolina Economic Investment Committee (EIC) to provide 201 new jobs over the next five years in Durham County.

It anticipates that construction of the facility will be completed by mid-2023.

Catalent also operates a biologics and analytical center of excellence in Kansas City, Missouri. The company has committed $12 million to expand that facility.

Earlier this month, the company announced that it had opened a sizeable commercial-scale cell therapy manufacturing facility in Gosselies, Belgium.

Additionally, it expanded a clinical supply facility in Shanghai while laying off about 600 workers at plants in the U.S.

Somerset, New Jersey–based Catalent said the new Durham, North Carolina facility would be an 80,000 ft2 facility with high-tech equipment and instrumentation. In addition, it would be outfitted with automation and digitization functionality.

Catalent saw swift growth in the early days of the pandemic until September 2021. So far this year, its stock price has fallen more than 60%, trading most recently under $46 per share. Its share price began the year at close to $120.

In 2021, the company acquired the Plano, Texas–based supplement company Bettera Holdings for $1 billion. That same year, Catalent also opened a clinical supply facility in Shiga, Japan and acquired RheinCell Therapeutics, a developer of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) technologies. It also purchased the gene therapy CDMO Delphi Genetics.

The company has been a publicly traded company since 2014

Catalent was founded in April 2007 after affiliates of the Blackstone Group bought the pharmaceutical technologies and services (PTS) division of Cardinal Health.