Industry Overview

The global
single-use processing systems market is estimated to grow to $5.35 billion by
2021. The widespread implementation of single-use systems is making product
manufacturing considerably more cost efficient. However, there is a need for
faster processes which means that industry players are pressured to optimise
their biomanufacturing strategies in order to keep up with the growing
biopharma market.
Pharma IQ created
an industry report based upon on feedback gathered from over 100 biopharma experts
and will cover several key industry topics including optimising
biomanufacturing processes, sustainability and environmental impact, product
documentation, sterility assurance and manufacturing flexibility. Here we will
represent some of the key findings from the report:
Almost 50% of
respondents believe that lack of viable technology is hindering the
implementation of continuous manufacturing 93% of respondents believe that all
companies will soon have to factor in the environmental impact of disposable
products
Over half of
respondents believe that the documentation provided for disposable products
does not cover all the information needed.
Only 41% of
respondents believe that all the necessary information is provided in the
documentation for disposable products
A major advantage
of disposables systems is that they can be used across different scales of
production. It is well suited for small-scale research and development
activities, as it does not rely on engineering infractures including utilities,
hard-piping, or automation is needed to set up and run such operations. This
enables the process to be performed on a smaller scale in different
environments.
When asking our
respondents, how often they seek new products from suppliers, it became apparent
that almost one third of respondents would only search for new products if
there was an issue or flaw with the product and so are not proactively
following the development of the market.
However, this may
depend on the size of the company, and with the large-scale organisations it
may be less disruptive to stick with one unit unless something is no longer
working for them.
We delved deeper
in to the continuous investigation of bio processing, from what we see there is
a fairly even can split between organisations investigating continuous
bioprocessing in downstream and upstream over the next 12 months.
Traditionally, upstream processing had more fully embraced single-use
technologies but this result demonstrates the viability for continuous
processing across the manufacturing line.
The union of
single-use systems and process automation has become increasingly prevalent
within biopharmaceutical manufacturing over the past decade, these are two of
the most predominant advancements in biomanufacturing and the main drivers for
these systems have altered very little in recent years. The processes
benefitting most from the integration of single-use systems are around
contamination and cleaning, reducing water consumption and small-scale
commercial production with low numbers of batches per year.
The results gathered in this report demonstrate that organisations are now looking more closely at implementing continuous processes and focusing on the sustainability element of disposable solutions. Single-use technology is gaining popularity as it is the most cost-efficient solution to increase rapidity in drug development, support larger batches of production, and achieve a quicker time to market the solutions. Companies that have integrated and shifted towards a single-use systems have expressed their satisfaction regarding lower costs, enhanced production and reduced overall contamination rates.
Download the full survey report here >>