A NEW $7 million laboratory has been opened to boost research & development and workforce training in the pharmaceutical and speciality chemicals industries.

The Kilo Lab on Jurong Island, unveiled yesterday by A*STAR's Institute of Chemical and Engineering Sciences (ICES), will specialise in studies involving the scaling up of chemical production processes.

Currently, many chemical research institutions conduct process experiments on new discoveries in small, milligram-level quantities.

But concerns about safety and environmental impacts often emerge when they attempt to scale-up research and make their findings commercially viable, said Dr Paul Sharratt, principle scientist of process science and modelling at ICES.

Kilo Lab - so named because of its ability to conduct experiments in measurements of kilograms rather than the milligrams that other institutions often work with - aims to plug this gap in the research market.

Designed and equipped like a commercial manufacturing plant, the research facility is capable of evaluating and tweaking new processes and recipes before moving on to full-scale production.

'We will invent ways to make processes cleaner, safer, cheaper and more efficient. And, in turn, we expect that society will benefit from safer and cheaper medicines and other products,' said Dr Keith Carpenter, executive director of ICES.

The laboratory, which is the first of its kind in South-east Asia, aims to tie up with multinational pharmaceutical companies and help bring their experiments to Singapore's shores.

Last year, the biomedical sciences sector contributed $19 billion in manufacturing output, and employed 12,450 workers. At least 12 international pharmaceutical companies have invested in manufacturing facilities here.