The final part of ‘History Sneak Peek’

06. 02. 2023

Construction, development, expansion, modernization. These are the main topics of the last part of the series ‘History Sneak Peek’, which was created to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Farmak a.s. foundation. Let’s wrap up by looking back at important milestones of the company, which should be celebrated. It covers the cross-section of the events between 2008 - 2019.

Kilolab - a part of the Development and Research Centre

Among other things, the plans of Farmak a.s. included the construction of a Research and Development Centre, whose organic part is undoubtedly the Development Midsize Operation also called Kilolab. Therefore, in March 2006 the process of construction began, as the 3rd phase of the reconstruction of the building No.13, which was completed in January 2008.

Technology and Equipment

The technological equipment of the newly built laboratory, designed for the development and verification of the technologies of active ingredients, has been designed with the greatest possible versatility to suit different technological processes and various sizes of production batches.

The main technological equipment of Kilolab, which is assembled in its own lattice[MH1] system[MH2] , is interestingly placed on the mezzanine about 1,1m above the 2nd level[MH3] . The entire operation depends on three reactors with accessories, which are designed for working at temperatures ranging from -90°C to 200°C.

OPPI and the year 2014 in the spirit of building new premises

The expansion of technological and capacity possibilities for the final processing stage of active substances required the construction of new premises. A subsidy from the Property and Development Programme run by OPPI gave us the opportunity to open a new two-story building named Final Operation Hall in June 2014. It was built with a reinforced concrete mounted skeleton 31.2 x 22.8 x 7.5 m called “HAFO”.

What is “HAFO” hiding?

Technology such as impact mill 160 UPZ, conic mill CONIWITT 150, homogenizer, insulator boxes and LBK filling head for safe handling of the product, VTS system for material transport, interleaved automatic washer, source of purified water and the vacuum pump is used on this site, for example, in the process of final batch treatment of active ingredients (APIs)[MH4] based on customer specification, protective screening, grinding, micronisation, homogenisation, weighing, or placing into final packaging.

Active ingredients production facility expansion and modernisation

In 2015, a new four-story production unit with catchment technology was launched. It was created by the upgrade of the existing Unihala building, which enabled

expansion of the capacity to produce active ingredients. Importantly, it provides higher level of protection for operators and products. Its construction was partially funded by the OPPI Development Programme. The build was completed in 7 months.

What does the new unit do?

In the new premises, there are available technologies such as a laminar box for the set of raw materials and intermediates, enamelled reactors, process filter, filters for deep filtration, capacitors, tanks, piping systems, control system, a secondary heat exchange circuit to ensure the heating and cooling of processes, a condensing and absorber unit for emission capture, which serves for the functions of chemical reaction, crystallization, isolation, or drying of active substances and their intermediates.

Modernization of the hydrogenation unit

The development of the company required not only the expansion of production capacity but also the development capacity, for which we again used grant support. This time from the OP PIK program The Potential. The extension was achieved thanks to the reconstruction of the existing building No.22 c in 2018, which underwent the dismantling of existing steel structures and equipment, layout division, replacement of internal plumbing, wiring, air conditioning and safety components, including repair of roofing and insulation installation.

Technology upgrade

The modernisation included not only the reconstruction, but also improvement of the technological area of the unit. For example, by purchasing a hydrogenation autoclave with a thermostat and filtration device for catalyst separation, the possibility of transferring research projects, from the laboratory scale into a midsize operating level[MH5] , has emerged. The acquisition of a DSC device, for the study of polymorphisms and for the characterisation of polymorphs, opened the opportunity to support research in this field.

Implementation of our own innovative processes

The last major event that we would like to mention in this series is the project of building a separate production unit (Small API Unit 13.02) for the implementation of our own innovative production processes, whose outputs are products with batch yield in units of up to tens of kilograms.

The new production unit was also created thanks to the reconstruction of the existing building No. 13, with the support of the OP PIK Innovation Program. It uses 400 litre reactors with high-power HUBER thermostats, allowing reactions in the temperature range from -80°C to 200°C.