GeminiBio has raised $15 million to fund the expansion of its growing manufacturing and warehouse operations in West Sacramento.
The company manufactures cell culture media, growth factors and custom media and bioprocess liquids for the cell and gene therapy market in clean room conditions.
GeminiBio is expanding its operations in two locations in West Sacramento as the company branches out from making products for research applications to also making products for commercial applications.
The 37-year-old company began selling into the biological manufacturing industry about four years ago, and those customers have more stringent requirements than the research customers.
The expansion will allow GeminiBio to dramatically increase production. It currently uses 1,000-liter vessels to make its products, and it's adding two 10,000-liter vessels and one 5,000-liter vessel at its existing 25,000-square-foot building at 920 Stillwater Road.
Meanwhile, in the same office park, the company is upgrading a leased 32,000-square-foot warehouse building on Reed Avenue into a controlled environment storage facility. That warehouse had no environmental controls, and the company is adding temperature control and clean rooms to the building, along with refrigerated and freezer areas that can be maintained at minus 20 degrees, GeminiBio said.
The investment is many millions of dollars each into both buildings, said CEO Brian Parker. He declined to disclose the specific amount of the investment, stating that it's proprietary.
On Thursday, Gemini Bioproducts Holding Inc. filed a disclosure report with the Securities and Exchange Commission that said the company has raised $15 million in debt and other financing.
Parker said the funding was to meet the needs of the capital expense of finishing the two buildings and their related equipment.
The Stillwater expansion should be completed in August and the Reed Avenue warehouse is on track to be completed a month later, he said.
GeminiBio was founded locally in 1985, and for several decades has been majority-owned by Fort Lauderdale, Florida-based health care private equity firm BelHealth Investment Partners LLC.
GeminiBio operates much of its manufacturing under ISO 7 controls, which are standards set by the Switzerland-based International Organization for Standardization.
The company last did a major expansion in 2020, and then in March that year it went to working double shifts to fulfill a federal contract to supply Covid-19 testing products.
