NEWARK – ILC Dover, the specialized engineering, development and manufacturing company, announced Friday that it is investing in a major production expansion in Mexico.
The expansion comes as the company quickly grows into its new focus on life sciences and enters into the sterile liquid handling and chemicals content market, officials said. This investment will generate additional production capacity for its single-use powder, fluid storage and fluid transfer solutions.
ILC has operated a site for its Grayling Industries subsidiary in Juarez, Mexico, near the Texan border city of El Paso, since 2013. It will add 20,000 square feet of new clean room space by the end of this year to support multi-site production of solutions for biotherapeutics, cell and gene therapy, and pharmaceutical markets, officials said. A dollar value of the investment by the private company was not disclosed.
It will continue manufacturing operations in Delaware, North Carolina, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Switzerland.
“Expansion in Juarez is an investment in our customers’ success and the next step in ILC Dover’s global growth journey. It strengthens our partnership with key pharmaceutical and biotherapeutics customers around the world — solidifying our ability to expand our presence in critical products for life-saving therapies, improve lead times, and securing our customers’ supply chain in North America,” said Corey Walker, CEO of ILC Dover, in a statement. “Most importantly, this expansion strengthens our position as a valuable and vertically integrated partner for our life science customers — supporting customers to continue to improve and optimize their workflows.”
The expansion is one of the first major moves since shaking up its CEO in November, with Walker, a veteran life sciences, advanced technologies and applied materials executive, taking over.
That change capped two years of change at ILC, which moved its headquarters to the University of Delaware STAR Campus from its longtime Federica plant in January. New Mountain Capital, a New York firm with $35 billion in assets under management, acquired ILC in February 2020 in a deal with another private equity firm, Behrman Capital.
The new chief executive came to Delaware after working closely with ILC’s private equity firm owner, New Mountain Capital, from 2016 to 2020. He was then a senior executive at Avantor, a chemicals and materials company headquartered outside Philadelphia, serving as executive vice president of the Americas, as well as the global Biomaterials and Electronic Materials businesses.
In December, Walker also oversaw the acquisition of KSE Scientific, a sterile solutions manufacturer which specializes in the production of water for injection (WFI) for biopharma, cell and gene therapy, tissue banking and medical device end-markets. Founded in 2000 and headquartered in Durham, N.C., KSE is a leading supplier of sterile consumable products and will continue to operate under its own brand.
“Under the leadership of founder James Lally, KSE has built an exciting platform and shares in ILC Dover’s culture in providing consistent, repeatable and high-quality service to customers,” Walker said then in a statement. “The acquisition accelerates ILC’s trajectory of becoming a market leader across the biopharmaceutical workflow and I look forward to working with the KSE team to further support the growth of both businesses.”
