Industry News

Swinburne University of Technology opened the $140 million Advanced Technologies Centre (ATC) in March of 2010 in Melbourne. Located on the Hawthorn campus, the 10-story building comprises two towers and has a footprint of 21,528 sf. Designed by H2o of Melbourne, the facility features maximum transparency to display technological innovations to the public. The ATC houses classrooms, engineering labs, a 500-seat lecture hall, and the Smart Structures Laboratory, where construction materials are tested with the application of extreme loads.

Alltech opened an algae fermentation facility in March of 2011 in Winchester, Ky. A $200 million renovation project delivered a flexible facility housing biomass fermenters with a capacity of up to 265,000 liters. The building includes a pilot production plant and is designed to support rapid scale-up of new products and processes. The facility houses both mechanical agitation and bubble column fermenters. Alltech is a producer of animal feed additives from materials such as yeast, bacteria, and enzymes.

The South Dakota School of Mines and Technology’s Paleontology Building in Rapid City has attained LEED Gold sustainable design certification. The $6 million facility houses laboratories, offices, 300,000 fossils, specimen receiving and preparation areas, collection storage, archives, and a library.  The building was constructed using concrete with 25 percent fly ash. Office counters and shelves are made from recycled paper. A large atrium features wall panels covered in a product made from compressed sunflower husks.

McMaster University is planning to begin construction in June of 2011 on an automotive research facility in Hamilton, Ontario. An existing warehouse will be renovated to provide 80,000 sf of laboratory, office, and business incubator space. The project will be located in the McMaster Innovation Park adjacent to the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (CANMET) Materials Technology Laboratory. Occupancy is expected in fall of 2012. The facility will support research and development of hybrid vehicles and advanced automotive technologies.

Quotient Clinical announced the completion of a major expansion of its pharmaceutical sciences facilities in March of 2011 in Nottingham. The GMP manufacturing suite has doubled in size and now incorporates six independent manufacturing rooms supporting oral, inhaled, and parenteral drug products. The formulation development and pharmaceutical analysis laboratory areas have also been significantly increased and now occupy an 11,000-sf purpose-built facility.