The latest news from CDMOs, CMOs, and suppliers featuring PharmaBlock Sciences, AGC Pharma Chemicals Europe, and Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging.

Chemicals/Chemical API Manufacturing

PharmaBlock Launches Chemistry and Engineering Technology Center
PharmaBlock Sciences (Nanjing), a provider of chemistry products and services for pharmaceutical R&D and commercial production, has launched a Chemistry and Engineering Technology Center (CETC) in Shangyu, Zhejiang Province, China.

The CETC, located next to its Zhejiang GMP manufacturing site, covers an area of 32,300 ft² and represents an investment of $8 million. The CETC is focused on flow chemistry, micropacked bed reactions, biocatalysis, and engineering technologies, including separation, crystallization, and the application of differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and process simulation.

Among these technologies, PharmaBlock is focusing on the application of micropacked bed in flow hydrogenation, which may be applied at lab scale, but also in pilot and manufacturing scale at PharmaBlock, with a daily output of 100 kg to 1,000 kg.

Source: PharmaBlock Sciences

AGC Pharma Chemicals Europe Expands Micronization Capacity
AGC, a manufacturer of glass, chemicals and high-tech materials, has announced plans to expand facilities at its pharmaceuticals CDMO business subsidiary, AGC Pharma Chemicals Europe, headquartered in Spain.

The expansion will upgrade existing production facilities to 1.3 times the capacity of current production levels and establish a new micronization facility for active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). In addition, a new R&D facility will be built to enable development of processes from lab scale to commercial production. The new R&D facility is scheduled to begin operation in March 2021 while the expanded facility is scheduled to begin operations in May 2022.

AGC Pharma Chemicals Europe, a synthetic pharmaceutical CDMO, was acquired from Boehringer Ingelheim in March 2019 to establish synthetic pharmaceutical production capability in Europe for the supply of APIs and intermediates. In October 2019, the name was changed from Malgrat Pharma Chemicals to its current name, AGC Pharma Chemicals Europe.

Source: AGC

Packaging

Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging Expands
Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging, a contract packager with bottling, blistering, pouching, unit-of-use, compliance and secondary packaging services, has purchased three high-speed blistering and cartoning lines with serialization and aggregation capabilities from McKesson RxPak’s production facility in Memphis, Tennessee. The infrastructure acquisition nearly doubles Legacy’s total blister production capacity, which now stands at half a billion packs per year.

In a separate equipment investment, this summer (summer of 2020), Legacy will also add an additional new high-speed bottling line to bring its bottling capacity to some 600 million units per year. Additionally, the company recently incorporated two new pouching machines for tablet and capsule-filling applications.

Source: Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging