JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – The Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) will, in December, launch an open-innovation facility to provide product and process development support for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) producing biologicals for industrial, veterinary and human applications.

The R90-million Biomanufacturing Industry Development Centre (BIDC) will provide incubated companies with access to ready-to-use biomanufacturing facilities, as well as research and development (R&D) laboratories.

The Development Bank of Southern Africa’s (DBSA’s) Jobs Fund provided R72-million of the funding, with the CSIR funding the balance.

Located in newly refurbished buildings at the CSIR campus, in Pretoria, the centre would further provide SMEs access to experts in the fields related to bioprocess development and scale-up.

The establishment of the BIDC is aimed at supporting and developing at least 12 businesses over the next three years, leading to a potential gross domestic product contribution of up to R180-million a year.

“The true benefit of this investment will be seen in the years thereafter as the biomanufacturing sector grows,” the CSIR said in a statement on Friday.

The centre aimed to support companies through the prototyping and scale-up phases of product development and would assist them with market acceptance testing and product launches.

It would also aid in lowering the barriers that inhibited innovative enterprises from translating their inventions into market-ready products.

The CSIR emphasised that the companies would remain the sole owners of their innovations and retain absolute control over their future in terms of added value and partnerships.

CSIR commercialisation manager Fanie Marais said the establishment of a well-resourced and operational biomanufacturing centre producing prototypes for the industrial, agricultural and health sectors required a significant long-term investment in both infrastructure and specialised skills.

“What makes the CSIR BIDC a unique resource is the blending of R&D and industrial and commercial expertise within the context of a working pilot-scale biomanufacturing plant that resembles a real-world working environment,” he commented.

The BIDC formed part of an expansion of the CSIR’s already significant presence in the field of biosciences, which included a R50-million investment in the development of a new R&D facility that would support the proposed centre.

Marais explained that biomanufacturing encompassed four major categories of production technology – natural product extraction, microbial fermentation, biocatalysis and cell culture.

Irrespective of the manner in which the biomass was generated, all technologies required downstream processing  – usually extraction and purification – followed by formulation, filling and packaging.

“Biomanufacturing serves a variety of industries, including biopharmaceuticals, industrial biologics, food and feed bioproducts, as well as diagnostic reagents and cosmetics,” he said.