Article
Driving UK competitiveness in pharmaceutical manufacturing
This article has been taken from The Gen newsletter - Autumn 2009.
Sagentia is part of a consortium led by GlaxoSmithKline delivering a step change improvement in advanced secondary pharmaceutical manufacturing in the UK.
The aim of the project is to substantially improve manufacturing efficiency within the UK pharmaceutical industry for the production of the largest proportion of dosage forms - tablets. The consortium will work to prove a new way of making tablets, which instead of using a batch-based proecss will use continuous processing.
This approach aims to dramatically reduce the cost of pharmaceutical manufacture, thereby enabling UK companies to compete more effectively with lower cost economies. The efficiency gains are targeted at improving manufacturing precision, productivity and mass yield, and will be deliverable at approximately 70 per cent of the capital cost of conventional technology.
The consortium is made up of partners from industry and academia and includes GlaxoSmithKline, GES Pharma Systems Ltd, Siemens Industrial Automation and Drives Technology, University of Warwick, Newcastle University and Sagentia.
The Technology Strategy Board, the government funded body that supports technological innovation in the Uk, is funding the project as part of a £24 million investment in high value manufacturing projects. This fund was launched in January 2009 and businesses from a broad range of industries were invited to form consortia to compete for funding. Only 50 per cent of the projects that met the assessment criteria were successful in gaining funding.
Iain Gray, Chief Executive of the Technology Strategy Board, said: "This investment is intended to maintain and develop the international competitiveness of UK manufacturing against a backdrop where manufacturing often gravitates to countries with lower overall costs. It's also important to ensure that companies continue to innovate during the downturn to ensure a successful recovery for the UK economy. This is part of a concerted drive to help to unlock competitive potential in high value manufacturing."