York Street, a US developer of real estate for biotechnology manufacturing, development and research has reached agreement with three Massachusetts-based companies to develop a large-scale biotechnology manufacturing facility in the state.

The other players in the scheme are: Parexel, a leading biopharmaceutical outsourcing organization; BioMetics a biomedical process management company focusing on the key manufacturing areas of process definition, development and scale-up; and Shooshanian Engineering, which specialises in the design and construction of biotechnology facilities.

"Our first manufacturing location is in Western Massachusetts and provides a facility that has 28% lower labour costs and 22% lower real estate costs, yet is a short drive to the key research locations in Cambridge and Boston," commented Samuel Kline, a managing partner at York Street.

"We believe that the lower costs when combined with easy access to key research sites will reduce time-to-market for new drugs," he added.

Biopharmaceutical contract manufacturing demand is expected to grow at 15 to 20 per cent per year but a significant capacity shortage is anticipated by 2006.