Germany-based privately held pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim is involved in drug discovery, development and manufacturing. The company invested more than $350m in 2011 to boost its operations in the US. It announced a number of projects to expand its US headquarters campus.

The expansions include construction of a new research and development building, a safety assessment building, a potent compound facility, cogeneration system and new administrative building, in addition to IT infrastructure.

US headquarters

The US headquarters of Boehringer Ingelheim is located on a 294-acre site, on Ridgebury road on the border of Ridgefield and Danbury, in Connecticut. It features a number of buildings for office, research and development (R&D) and safety assessment.

Construction / contractors involved in the investment project

The existing research and development centre in Ridgefield was originally designed by Flad & Associates. It was built in four phases with 40,050ft² of R&D space, 109,800ft² of laboratory space and an 88,690ft² safety assessment building.

Expansion of Boehringer Ingelheim’s US operations

Ground was broken for a new safety assessment building within the headquarters campus in August 2011.

The new building is used for conducting non-clinical safety studies on the drugs being researched or developed by the company. It has a footprint of 63,000ft². The construction was completed by 2013 at an estimated investment of $42.5m.

The company announced $65m investment on an R&D facility at its headquarters in November 2011. The facility was built as an extension to the existing R&D facility at the campus.

The existing facility has become old and unsuitable for the latest technologies. The new facility helps the company overcome this problem.

Drugs to be produced at the Connnecticut-based R&D facility

In March 2015, Boehringer opened the new $65m R&D facility in Ridgebury. The facility offers a 72,000ft² area for R&D and production activities.

The pilot plant at the facility produces active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) for use in drugs, which are in the early stages of development. It provides a chemical processing environment to transform the new chemical entities discovered in the company’s R&D facilities to APIs in sufficient quantities to support the development of life saving drugs.

Boehringer Ingelheim R&D facility at Ridgefield

The new $65m R&D facility is suitable only for drugs in the first two phases of development.

The third stage of development needs testing on a large-scale population, which requires higher quantities of the drug.

The products that are developed and approved at the facility are sent for further research and development to the company’s full scale R&D facilities in Ohio and Virginia in the US, as well as those in Germany and Italy.

CDA agreed to provide a $5m sales and use tax rebate to Boehringer Ingelheim for creating jobs through the expansion of the headquarters at Ridgefield.

The project created approximately 400 jobs. The CDA approved the exemption based on Boehringer Ingelheim’s proposal to invest $84m in the headquarters expansion.

Other projects of Boehringer in the US

As part of expansion of operations, Boehringer announced a number of projects in the US in 2011. Investments made by the company in 2011, other than those at the headquarters, included an $89m investment on expanding a biological manufacturing facility of the company in St. Joseph’s Missouri, investment in a new animal vaccine research facility in Sioux Center, Iowa, and a $50m investment in a high-containment operations facility in Columbus, Ohio.

The investments made by Boehringer are expected to significantly benefit the local economy. The company expects to develop innovative and new drugs and attain more patents through the new facilities.