The company’s expanded facility includes new bioreactors for stem cell production.
A longtime South Florida biotechnology company has expanded its main facility and plans to make additional hires after naming a new senior executive.
GBI Biomanufacturing signed a long-term lease to expand its combined headquarters and laboratory at 1850 N.W. 69th Ave. in Plantation. Move-in was earlier this year.
With the new lease, the company occupies the entirety of the 40,000-square-foot facility. That’s more than 40% bigger than its previous 28,000-square-foot presence in the building.
No outside brokers were brought in.
The landlord is an entity managed by Chaim Cahane of Miami Beach-based Forte Capital Management. The property last traded for $15.65 million in 2024.
GBI Biomanufacturing says the new space will double its capacity to produce stem cells, with plans to ramp up to 1 million per year. That could support thousands of patients in Florida every year, according to company figures.
As part of the move, the company, formerly known as Goodwin Biotechnology, plans to hire up to 10 new biopharmaceutical scientists and laboratory technicians.
This all comes a few months after GBI Biomanufacturing named Jesse McCool as its new president and COO. A longtime biotech executive, he brings more than two decades of leadership in biologics manufacturing.
“We have an additional 15,000 square feet of state-of-the-art bioreactors … and are shifting to a 3-dimensional manufacturing process,” McCool said, referring to the latest expansion.
“We have invested nearly $26 million in our facility,” he added.
In addition to the headquarters-and-laboratory, GBI Biomanufacturing also has a 12,500-square-foot warehouse across the street. The company says both the warehouse and expanded laboratory comply with the necessary Food and Drug Administration regulations, known as Good Manufacturing Practices.
GBI Biomanufacturing told the Business Journal the decision to expand was influenced in part by a new Florida stem cell law that allows doctors to offer regenerative treatments for certain conditions that are not approved by the FDA.
“The stem cell law … has provided us an additional opportunity to leverage this expanded space and capacity for the manufacture of high quality, valuable stem cells for Florida’s patients,” said Karl Pinto, GBI Biomanufacturing’s chair of the board of directors.
South Florida is seen as a rising hub for the life sciences, an industry that includes pharmaceutical, biotechnology, clinical research and medical device ventures.
Other life sciences companies to announce recent local expansions include First Ascent Biomedical, a Miami-based cancer testing startup, and Meso Scale Diagnostics, an out-of-state company with plans to open a manufacturing plant in Jupiter.
A 2024 study by data provider CommercialCafe ranked South Florida as the country’s seventh-biggest life sciences hub, with nearly 3,500 local establishments in the industry. However, the tri-county region came in at No. 31 in an overall ranking of U.S. life sciences hubs that considered a wider view of each metro area’s labor force, talent pool, educational institutions and more.
Author: Mark Dovich
Link to published news story from South Florida Business Journal: GBI Biomanufacturing expands Plantation facility – South Florida Business Journal
