Albemarle expands South Haven API production site

Expansion enables the company to advance its growing portfolio of custom products

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Jun 26, 2012, 04:10 ET

BATON ROUGE, La., June 26, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), a global developer, manufacturer and marketer of highly engineered specialty chemicals, announced today that its FDA-registered South Haven, Michigan site has expanded and upgraded its multi-product cGMP active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) manufacturing facility. Production using the new expanded capacity commenced on June 1, 2012.

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This expansion is the latest in a series of projects at the South Haven site to increase capabilities and production throughput, meeting the increasing demand for both generic API products and custom manufacturing service portfolios. In the past two years, the number of custom API projects has more than doubled at the South Haven site. The investment matches the solids handling equipment with the reactor capacity and will enable the company to advance its growing portfolio of custom API products, several of which have progressed to late stage clinical development and pre-registration status.

Albemarle Fine Chemistry Services specializes in enabling its customers to go to market in an efficient and fully compliant manner by providing comprehensive process development and validation capabilities followed by seamless transition into commercial-scale production. Albemarle uses the Quality by Design (QbD) approach to establish manufacturing processes and then speed validated commercial products to market.

About Albemarle
Albemarle Corporation, headquartered in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a leading global developer, manufacturer, and marketer of highly-engineered specialty chemicals for consumer electronics, petroleum refining, utilities, packaging, construction, automotive/transportation, pharmaceuticals, crop protection, food-safety and custom chemistry services. The Company is committed to global sustainability and is advancing its eco-practices and solutions in its three business segments, Polymer Solutions, Catalysts and Fine Chemistry. Corporate Responsibility Magazine selected Albemarle to its prestigious "100 Best Corporate Citizens" list for 2010 and 2011. Albemarle employs approximately 4,000 people and serves customers in approximately 100 countries. Albemarle regularly posts information to www.albemarle.com, including notification of events, news, financial performance, investor presentations and webcasts, Regulation G reconciliations, SEC filings, and other information regarding the Company, its businesses and the markets we serve.

Albemarle's Fine Chemistry Services (FCS) division is an innovative, full-service provider of fine chemicals to the world's leading companies across the pharmaceutical, agrichemical, and specialty materials markets. Albemarle's FCS division helps global customers complete hundreds of successful projects through a powerful combination of proven chemistry expertise, game-changing process development, high-quality custom manufacturing and exceptional service. From innovative R&D to commercial-scale production, Albemarle's FCS division delivers the knowledge, experience, resources, creativity and service you need to move products to market faster and accelerate your business. To learn more about Albemarle's FCS division, please visit www.albemarle.com/fcs.

"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release regarding Albemarle Corporation's business that are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K.

SOURCE Albemarle Corporation