Hovione Installs New Large-Scale Spray Drying Unit

Hovione has announced the installation of a new large-scale spray drying unit in Loures, Portugal. This new unit is specifically designed to handle high potency APIs and to use a wide variety of organic solvent systems. The unit will be installed in compliance with the most stringent Quality and Safety Standards.  Spray drying is used in a multitude of pharmaceutical applications and is often the first technique used to enable poorly soluble oral drugs, to isolate biopharmaceuticals and for the production of inhalable dry powder formulations.

The new large-scale commercial facility will be in full operation by March 2016, and Hovione’s Senior Management is enthusiastic about the expansion of its offering and the new possibilities it entails. According to Dave Hoffman, Vice President of Sales & Business Development: “The new unit has all state-of-the-art technological developments and, more importantly, unique features from an accumulated knowledge of more than 10 years of experience in commercial spray drying.”

This additional commercial unit is the first phase of a broad expansion program designed to increase the scope of offering, address customer needs and expand capacity.

“We installed this new spray dryer in response to growing customer demand for the technology. Hovione’s leading position in spray drying is built on the experience of over 200 development programs. Thanks to our Development by Design approach we can develop a process and scale it up to a commercial batch size in a matter of weeks using a minimum quantity of API” said Filipe Gaspar, Vice President of R&D.

The new unit will add additional capacity to the spray drying facilities at Hovione. Currently, Hovione has spray drying facilities in Portugal, Ireland and the US covering all of the requirements of the pharmaceutical market in terms of scale, bioburden control and ability to handle highly potent materials.