Lonza Group, a Swiss life sciences company, started to build its second biologics manufacturing plant here Thursday, a shot in the arm for Singapore' s biologics industry.

After the first 250 million U.S. dollars plant built last February, the new plant, claiming an investment of 230 million U.S. dollars, is also a joint venture between Lonza and BioOne Capital, an investment branch of Singapore Economic Development Board.

It is Singapore's fourth planned facility for biologics, after U.S.-based biotechnology giant Genentech on Wednesday announced plans to set up a 140 million U.S. dollars microbial manufacturing facility here.

"Including GlaxoSmithKline's vaccine manufacturing plant, Singapore has attracted four significant commercial-scale biologics manufacturing investments within a period of less than two years," said Singapore's Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang at the groundbreaking ceremony.

A significant proportion of the global biomedical sciences industry's future growth is expected to be driven by biologics drugs, Lim noted.

Hence Singapore is trying to develop biologics industry, building capabilities in research, development and manufacturing, Lim added.

The output of Singapore's biomedical sector reached 18 billion Singapore dollars (about 11 billion U.S. dollars) in 2005, making it the third largest manufacturing sector after electronics and chemicals.