Charles River Laboratories, a Wilmington, Massachusetts-based provider of drug development and manufacturing support services, has completed implementation of an automated manufacturing suite for its Endosafe bacterial endotoxin testing cartridges, expanding automated inspection and digital traceability while increasing production capacity.

The suite reached full operational capacity in July 2026 and automates manufacturing and inspection processes for the cartridges. According to the announcement, the system performs inspections on every cartridge for parameters including cartridge thickness, reagent fill, package seal integrity, and product identification.

Since becoming fully operational, the automated system reportedly has reduced scrap rates by 2% and invalid cartridge rates by 13% compared with manual cartridge production. The company also claims a 14% increase in production capacity across its Trillium and LAL cartridges and an 87% improvement in labor productivity.

The system uses imaging to inspect reagent fill and other cartridge characteristics and assigns each cartridge a unique identification number for lifecycle traceability. Manufacturing personnel can review inspection images, measurements, and packaging data to support investigations and process improvements.

Charles River also transitioned to automated flat-tray packaging as part of the manufacturing changes, reducing manual handling during packaging. The company said the automated suite allows skilled employees to be reassigned from manual cartridge production to other manufacturing activities.

The automated manufacturing investment adds to Charles River’s broader expansion of services supporting biopharmaceutical manufacturing. In July, the company announced a collaboration with Arovella Therapeutics to provide GMP next-generation sequencing services for cell bank characterization and viral safety testing of clinical batches of ALA-101, an investigational CAR-iNKT cell therapy.