EU pharma majors continue to invest in technology

Gouda, the Netherlands - The European pharmaceutical industry is continuing to invest structurally in new technology, according to technical services company Imtech has recently won contracts totalling around Euro31 million with various pharma companies in the region. The company claims technical leadership in the fields of air treatment, clean room solutions, energy technology, electrical engineering and instrumentation.

"Even during economically difficult circumstances we see that the European pharmaceutical industry’s demand for these high-tech solutions stays buoyant," said Imtech CEO René van der Bruggen. "That is why this industry remains an important segment for Imtech. Not in the least because various Imtech companies are increasingly co-operating with each other, which in turn leads to synergy and further growth."

At Corsier-sur-Vevey in Switzerland - the principal biotechnical production site of Merck Serono - subsidiary Imtech Deutschland) is providing the high-tech technical infrastructure for the expansion of a biotechnical research and production building. This extension consists of 19 different parts, all dedicated to the specialised treatment of cancer.

Among other things Imtech is delivering sustainable energy solutions, innovative air treatment and climate technology, specialised clean room solutions and an extremely efficient heat recovery system that re-uses 70% of the hourly production of 315,000 m3 of air in order to heat the building and to support the primary biotechnical production processes.

This includes the use of high-tech heating pumps in combination with evaporation technology, compressed air, water-cooled compressors, absorption driers and redundant cooling. With 4,400 hardware and 8,000 software modules for measurement and control, Imtech is integrating all the technical facilities to deliver a smoothly working total solution.

At the GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals sites in Saint-Amand-les-Eaux and Notre-Dame-de-Bondeville in France, Wavre in Belgium and in Singapore, Imtech is providing air treatment solutions in special pharmaceutical isolators that are deployed to use conditioned air - with optimum air humidity, pressure and temperature geared to the primary processes of GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals - for sterilisation of parts of the production process.

For Wyeth Medica Ireland, Imtech and Suir Engineering - Imtech’s Irish specialist in electrical engineering and instrumentation - are providing the complete technological equipment of several clean rooms and research laboratories.

Meanwhile, for the Irish Millipore, a supplier of special medical products for bioscientific research and biopharmaceutical production, Imtech (Suir Engineering) is providing all the electrical solutions needed for a high-tech facility that can separate molecules from each other.