Fujifilm launches CMO offer at Chemspec Europe
Fujifilm used its presence on the UK Trade & Investment stand at Chemspec Europe 2019 in Basel on 26-27 June to launch the contract manufacturing services of its site at Grangemouth, Scotland, which will be targeted mainly at the agrochemicals, pigments and additives markets. It is not GMP and therefore will have limited scope in the pharmaceuticals industry.
“Chemspec is useful for us because the asset makes highly complex molecules, which is our speciality,” said Dr Pauline Gibson, commercial general manager at the site. “We are using the show to launch our contract chemical manufacturing business for external customers and are freeing up capacity in our assets.”
Key features at Grangemouth include stainless steel reactors at up to 30 m3, glass-lined reactors up to 20 m3 and rubber-lined reactors at up to 60 m3. It routinely operates between 20 and 150°C and can carry out specialised operations to 200°C, in batch sizes up to 10 tonnes. Among the major chemistry capabilities are cyanation, diazotisation, oxidation and couplings. The offer also includes analytical services.
One particularly interesting capability, Gibson said, is the site’s ‘streamlined process system’. It does not have a pilot plant but vessels in the laboratory are designed to mimic the commercial-scale facilities in terms of such aspects of agitation, heat transfer and cooling. This enables Fujifilm to scale up projects rapidly from 2 kg to full-scale production.
Fujifilm originally acquired the facility from Avecia in 2006. It is mostly active in colorants; the company has another UK site that carried out formulation, a similar site in the US and a solvent ink manufacturing facility in India. Grangemouth as a whole is a gigantic former ICI site that is now home to multiple chemical manufacturing companies, including CMO CalaChem.
RELATED ARTICLES
