Mumbai: Aker Kvaerner has secured a contract for preliminary design of a new large-scale multi-product mammalian cell culture facility for EMD Pharmaceuticals of Durham, an affiliate of Merck KGaA of Darmstadt, Germany.

As a result of winning the EMD conceptual design competition against several international competitor companies, the Aker Kvaerner team, whose members include Kinetics Biopharm of Philadelphia, has been awarded the contract for preliminary design of this world-scale commercial production facility.

Aker Kvaerner has also been selected for the project's basic design, equipment procurement, detailed engineering design, field support and validation. The project will be executed by Aker Kvaerner's US pharmaceutical headquarters in Bridgewater, New Jersey.

The BioFab Project, EMD's name for this project, will commence immediately. The state-of-the-art EMD biopharmaceutical facility will include laboratories, offices, warehouse, and the cGMP Mammalian Cell Culture plant.

Implementation of the BioFab project will be in two phases. Phase I: the preliminary design, will begin immediately. Phase II: scheduled to begin in mid-2003, after Merck KGaA has made a final determination of where the facility will be located. The project is planned to be over by mid-2006.

''Aker Kvaerner is delighted to be working with EMD Pharmaceuticals, a valued customer and a global pharmaceutical leader,'' says John Petchonka, the president of Aker Kvaerner's pharmaceutical business.

EMD vice-president (supply chain) Dr Richard Schoenfeld says: ''The Aker Kvaerner-Kinetics team demonstrated an innovative approach and challenged our staff with some ideas that others had not considered. They also modelled various different scenarios of upstream and downstream capacity and made recommendations based on this modelling. This type of thinking will be a valuable asset as we move ahead with the design phase of this project.''

Aker Kvaerner is a leading global provider of engineering and construction services, technology products and integrated solutions. Group activities span a number of industries, including oil and gas upstream and downstream, process, pharmaceuticals, metals, power, chemical pulping, environmental and shipbuilding. Aker Kvaerner is a multi-local group of businesses with nearly $6 billion of annual revenues and around 34,000 employees in more than 30 countries.

The E&C business area of Aker Kvaerner specialises in the provision of process technology, design, engineering, project management, procurement and construction to a number of industrial sectors on a worldwide basis: chemicals and polymers, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, power, water, nuclear, minerals, mining and metals.

With an annual turnover of $1.6 billion, the E&C business employs more than 8,000 people operating worldwide. It offers the complete range of services that are necessary to realise global projects from conception to start-up. These services include a portfolio of advanced process technologies, a full range of engineering studies (including bankable feasibility and environmental studies), total project management, engineering and design, procurement, construction, commissioning and maintenance services.

EMD Pharmaceuticals, the US affiliate of Merck KGaA, is a new, fully integrated pharmaceutical company with an initial concentration on launching new products in oncology and diabetes. Located in Durham, NC, EMD focuses on meeting patient and physician needs with pioneering pharmaceutical products and services.

With more than 34,000 employees in 55 countries, the Merck group generated sales of euro 7.5 billion in 2001. Founded in 1668 in Darmstadt, Germany, the company aims to be a world leader in its core businesses of pharmaceuticals and chemicals. Merck groups its operating activities under Merck KGaA, in which the Merck family holds 74 per cent and the remaining 26 per cent is publicly traded.

The former US subsidiary, Merck & Co, has been a completely independent company since 1917. Merck KGaA has built a strategic oncology portfolio by developing and in-licensing product candidates in four areas - monoclonal antibodies, therapeutic vaccines, immunocytokines and angiogenesis inhibitors.