IT’S a strong claim, but it’s one matched by equally bold ambitions.

Outside the Centre for Process Innovation’s (CPI) new £38m Darlington base stands a board proclaiming ‘ingenuity at work’.

The phrase is actually used by construction firm Interserve, which has been tasked with overseeing the creation of the high-tech site.

Nevertheless, it’s one that neatly sums up CPI’s aspirations.

Just yards away from Darlington’s Bank Top railway station, off Yarm Road, the National Biologics Manufacturing Centre is progressing at a rapid pace.

The building, based in an area renowned for being the cradle of the railways, will open later this year to spearhead another industrial revolution.

From the world’s first passenger route, the Stockton and Darlington railway, nearly 200 years ago, Darlington will become another leader.

However, this time it will be a European pioneer in medical innovation to develop research techniques and development.

The centre will work on potentially life-saving cures and vaccines, allowing companies of varying size and stature to develop, prototype and scale up the next generation of products.

Its focus on biologics will cover a raft of conditions, from antibodies used to treat cancer cells, to vaccines aimed at fighting flu.

As I tour the centre, which is expected to house about 50 full-time staff, scores of construction workers are operating in featureless spaces, which will soon become laboratories and offices.

In the bowels of the building sits a large atrium, a space where meetings and conferences will take place, while above, the plant room gleams with shining silver equipment and copper pipes, and endless wiring weaves a myriad of overhead trails.

Opposite, orange sparks spin wildly from grinding and a bright yellow crane is visible through the building’s many windows, standing tall as it carries out its next task.

Walking around with Lucy Foley, CPI’s lead biopharmaceutical engineer, I feel the wind whistling through an open space in the building’s shell.

The gap will be filled soon enough, but such transparency is a key facet to this development.

Where some companies may be reluctant to deliver a window into their world, the attitude here is different; the CPI says it wants people to know what it is doing and, moreover, engage with it.

“Most of what we do, you wouldn’t know what we were doing if you saw it”, says Ms Foley.

“But the rest of the time we are a national centre and it’s all about innovation.

“We are very big on supporting science, technology, engineering and maths, and hope to have schools here.

“We could do some basic schools training or work with universities.

“Us being here and making people curious about what we are doing is only a good thing.

“Since ICI went we have had a real lack of people with the necessary skills.

“We have got to get students interested.”

Darlington’s place in medical history comes at the expense of the rest of the UK, with sites across the country, including Cambridge, renowned for its scientific reputation, overlooked in favour of County Durham.

Bosses previously told The Northern Echo the decision was swayed by the region’s links to universities and manufacturers, such as GlaxoSmithKline, in Barnard Castle, County Durham, and Teesside’s Fujifilm.

Speaking last year, Dr Chris Dowle, CPI director of biologics, said the fervour and interest for its work was intrinsic to the decision.

He added: “With us being in Darlington, it’s a bit like moving from trains to strains.

“There is the sense the town has a can-do and will-do attitude, and it has a real hunger for new things.

“We had a list of more than 30 sites and whittled that down to six.

“Some of those were around places like Cambridge, but, by a good whisker, Darlington was chosen, and for a number of reasons.

“The enthusiasm and will of Darlington Borough Council, Tees Valley Unlimited and the rest of the team put together was very important.”

As well as the £38m development, a £20m sister plant, supported by £10m from Tees Valley Unlimited local enterprise partnership, as part of the Government’s local growth fund, will follow in 2017.

That will aim to revolutionise the healthcare sector, by testing and making technology to deliver medicines for specific diseases and patient cases.

However, for now, the focus is on opening the Biologics Centre, which is expected to start work in the summer.

“We have got some initial projects, so we need to be up and running for them”, added Ms Foley.

“The summer is going to be fun.”

PANEL: WHAT ARE BIOLOGICS?

A biopharmaceutical, or biologic, is any medicinal product made in or extracted from biological sources, such as bacteria.

Examples include:

Antibodies, which may be used to target or destroy cancer cells

Vaccines to prevent infectious diseases, such as flu and Ebola

Insulin for the treatment of diabetes

Hormones and enzymes to replace missing proteins in rare genetic disorders

PANEL: WHO IS THE CPI?

The CPI is a national technology and innovation centre for the process manufacturing industry

It provides facilities and knowledge to help customers to deliver products to the market faster by proving their commercial strength

It has worked with more than 2,000 firms, from large pharmaceutical and manufacturing companies, such as Rolls-Royce and Procter and Gamble, to smaller start-ups.

Successfully completing in excess of 350 public and private projects, worth more than £300m, the CPI last year revealed it was supporting the Darlington-based National Horizons Centre (NHC), which will back emerging industries and could create thousands of North-East jobs.

At NetPark, in Sedgefield, County Durham, CPI’s labs have also played a key role in helping PolyPhotonix produce sleep masks capable of transforming the treatment of eye disease in diabetes sufferers.

Funded by £14m of taxpayers’ money, bosses say the masks could save the NHS £1bn a year.