Public and private spending on new construction and plant maintenance of pharma and biotech facilities is higher in this year’s second quarter compared with a year ago.

A total of 135 capital and maintenance projects worth $4.3 billion are expected to begin construction between now and June, a slight increase of about $200 million, or 5 percent, according to an analysis of reported projects by Industrial Info Resource’s Pharmaceutical Tracker. In last year’s second quarter, there were 65 projects slated to begin.

However, the average total investment value for each project declined to an average of $31.8 million, from $64 million per project, a 52 percent drop. The construction start of several extremely large projects in 2006 was responsible for the difference.

In the public sector this year, East Baltimore Development started the $450 million first phase of an ambitious Life Science and Tech Center. Construction also got under way on a $200 million national biocontainment laboratory in Boston

Among drugmakers, Amgen is expected to break ground on a $350 million, 600,000-square-foot expansion of its Helix research campus in Seattle, although the biotech is delaying expansion in Ireland of a $1 billion plant. Meanwhile, Boehringer-Ingelheim began a $500 million expansion of its Ridgefield, Conn., campus, but its Ben Venue Laboratories subsidiary in Ohio is the only one of the top three projects getting under way this quarter that will add contract manufacturing capacity.

You can read the complete story in Reliable Plant magazine.

Hat tip to OnPharma.[tags]Manufacturing, R&D Spending[/tags]