TEESSIDE architects practice The Dewjoc Partnership has completed a £85m project in China for a major international pharmaceutical company.

The contract to design a new Glaxo Wellcome plant at Suzhou, an hour's drive from Shanghai, is the latest export success for Dewjoc, strengthening its position as the North-East's most successful exporter of architectural services.

Dewjoc has extensive experience of the pharmaceutical industry, including designing a £12m Glaxo Wellcome plant in Poznan, Poland, and carrying out projects elsewhere in Asia and the Middle East.

Partner Andy Gregory, who has specialised in pharmaceuticals since joining Dewjoc in 1990, said: "It is now nearly four years since we started work on Suzhou. It has been a tough and challenging project, but by the end we had achieved a building we can be proud of. It has certainly been the most satisfying project of my career so far."

The Suzhou project was co-ordinated from Dewjoc's headquarters in Middlesbrough, with two senior staff spending 18 months on site, providing technical support to the Chinese construction teams to install both imported and local components.

The new plant comprises ten buildings, including three environmentally-controlled manufacturing modules and an automated receipt and despatch warehouse.

Located on the flood plain of the Yangtze River, the buildings sit on 24m long piles supporting a raised ground floor, and are designed to withstand earthquakes and tropical storms.

Steelwork and cladding, including the entire external faade, was fabricated in the UK and shipped to China by sea.

Glaxo Wellcome had already set up an interim manufacturing plant in Suzhou's high-tech business park, and Dewjoc was involved in fitting it out and bringing it into line with Glaxo Wellcome's requirements.

Mr Gregory's first visit to Suzhou was in November 1998, when work on site was already underway.

He said: "It was our role to give advice on the interpretation of designs, and guidance on construction techniques and quality control.

"We had very clear guidelines on standards expected by a blue chip multinational and we had to communicate clearly at the beginning the importance of these standards.

"With perseverance and an understanding of difference of cultures we achieved a great deal; the more we realised that we couldn't impose our English ways, the better we prospered."

Dewjoc is currently involved in major pharmaceutical projects in Eqypt and Poland, and has experience with previous developments in China, Columbia, Brazil, Taiwan, and Saudi Arabia