Olon begins R&D centre

Italian CDMO Olon is to invest €10 million to create an R&D hub at its headquarters site at Rodano near Milan. This will integrate seven existing R&D centres and will be dedicated entirely to research laboratories to be used to develop APIs and manufacturing processes. 

Construction has started and is due to be completed in Q2 2023. This will also lead to about 50 new researchers being hired, bringing the corporate total to around 350.

“The new hub represents growth in terms of people, expertise and skills, with the strategic objective of boosting internal know-how,” the firm said. “Based on integrated data systems, this know-how will enable the company to scale up products faster and to achieve highly flexible and reliable tech transfer from one site to another.”

The centre will house multiple different areas, each dedicated to a specific field of application. These will include a laboratory for process safety and research into scale-up and transfer processes, an analytical R&D area and a process development laboratory with a team focusing on the development of advanced processes. 

In particular, Olon is focusing on the introduction of continuous manufacturing, biocatalysis and photochemistry. Many will be carried out in partnership with academia.