The second of IBO’s biannual new laboratory roundup primarily focuses on chemical, consumer and government research. The table on page 3 highlights new labs in the energy, food and pharmaceutical industries. Many companies are expanding their facilities in Asia in the hopes of strengthening their presence and increasing sales.

Merck opened its Material Research Center in Darmstadt, Germany, in September. The 11,000-square-meter (36,000-square-foot) R&D facility consists of two six-story buildings and a cleanroom for 340 employees and is Merck’s largest single R&D investment in the chemicals business sector to date. The lab activities will conduct research on microbiological test systems for detecting pathogenic bacteria in food, liquid crystals for flat panel displays, materials for organic light-emitting diodes and light-emitting diodes, and materials for mobile energy storage systems. Previously, the majority of the R&D center’s staff was located at three different sites in Darmstadt, Frankfurt and Mainz. The new facility cost approximately €50 million ($67 million = €0.73 = $1).

In May, Merck also launched its second research center in Korea, the five-story Advanced Technology Center (ATC). The two-year project cost KRW 14 billion ($12 million = KRW 1,142 = $1). Merck Korea’s first research center, the Technical Center, launched in 2002, is mostly focused on production and quality control. The ATC, however, located in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, is solely focused on R&D of new technologies, including liquid crystals.

Also in Korea, Dow Electronic Materials is strengthening its presence with the addition of a new R&D center in Hwaseong, outside of Seoul. The Dow Seoul Technology Center, slated to open in 2011, will serve customers in the electronics industry, focusing on technological advancements in flat panel display technologies, semiconductor devices and related applications. The new multistory complex will employ more than 200 scientists and engineers. The facility will feature cleanroom capability, chemistry and application laboratories, and office space.

In Shanghai, China, Rhodia’s new International R&D Center, one of its five major R&D centers in the world (one is in Brazil, one is in the US and two are in France), covers 6,500 square meters (70,000 square feet) and employs 150 research scientists. Since planning for the center began in spring 2008, Rhodia has already employed 70 researchers who have contributed approximately 15 inventions, which are slated to be registered as patents.

Elsewhere in China, Proctor & Gamble’s new R&D center opened in August in Beijing. The innovation center cost around $70 million and employs 520 people from 16 countries. Its focus is on the company’s core product categories such as baby care, fabric care, oral hygiene, beauty, hair care and snacks. In addition to identifying goods aimed at Chinese customers and potentially other emerging nations, the lab’s offerings could be rolled out in areas like the US and Western Europe if appropriate.

P&G will unveil a similar center in Singapore in 2013. The center will focus on beauty and grooming products, as well as corporate R&D. The company hopes to expand R&D capabilities throughout Asia. Its technical center in Kobe, Japan, will be converted into a hub center specializing in fabric and home care solutions and serving its fine fragrance and cosmetics division. The Bangalore, India, specialist hub center will focus on innovation techniques such as modeling and stimulation.

Also in India, Nestle is setting up its first R&D facility, which is expected to be operational in July 2012. The new center will focus on “nutritionally enhanced products at affordable prices,” including culinary, cereals, beverages and dairy products. The 240,000-square-foot center will employ a team of approximately 40 scientists and engineers. Nestle SA forecasts emerging markets like India to make up 45% of overall sales by 2020.

Seventeen hundred miles away in Kakkanad, a suburb of Kochi, the Indian state of Kerala hopes to further medicine quality testing with the six-story, 30,000-square-foot Ernakulam Regional Drug Testing Laboratory. The facility will cost an estimated INR 5 crore ($1.1 million = INR 45 = $1). Planning for the facility began in 2005, and it is scheduled to be completed by September 2012. Approximately 10,000 medicines can be tested annually at the facility. Combined with the current 4,000 samples that can be tested annually at the regional lab in Thiruvananthapuram, the state’s drug-testing capacity will reach 14,000 samples.

Farther east, in Australia, Liverpool Hospital broke ground in April on the Ingham Health Research Facility in Sydney. The four-story translational research center, which will be linked to the hospital and existing research facilities, will be able to accommodate as many as 48 projects simultaneously when it begins operations in March 2012. The government is investing a total of AUD 46.9 million ($45.1 million = AUD 1.03 = $1) for the project’s construction from 2009 to 2012.

Construction on a $200 million satellite campus for the National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Rockville, Maryland, began in September. The project involves construction of a new home for 2,100 employees. The complex, consisting of twin seven-story buildings, will take two years to complete. Located on Johns Hopkins’s Montgomery County Campus, the 575,000-square-foot facility is scheduled to be completed in early 2013.

The NCI is also building a facility in Frederick, Maryland, 30 miles away. Part of the Advanced Technology Partnerships Initiative, which is aimed at accelerating development of new treatments, the $250 million, 330,000-square-foot Advanced Technology Research Facility will house the Biopharmaceutical Development Program’s Manufacturing Facility, Advanced Biomedical Computing Facility, and administrative offices to oversee the agency’s partnerships with industry, academia and nonprofits. The facility will add approximately 200 jobs when complete.

In September in Richland, Washington, researchers started moving into the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL) Physical Sciences Facility’s five buildings, three years after ground was broken on the $224 million project. The buildings and the facility account for 345,000 square feet of space, which was added over the past year or so. About 220 employees will work on national and homeland security and energy research at the facility. PNNL also plans to develop a chemical sciences and imaging laboratory for imaging tools that offer details on the nano-scale. Modern chemistry and materials synthesis laboratories would also be part of the new building.