Colorcon Inc. has opened a new technical service, laboratory and conference facility in Bogota, Colombia, to support market growth and customers across the Andean countries, Central America and the Caribbean. The new facility is strategically located close to transportation hubs to service the pharmaceutical industry across this region.

This specially designed facility has internationally recognized certification for the containment and safe handling of Level II and Level IV active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), and will provide customer’s faster turnaround on technical services and increased capacity to handle more projects.

“The laboratory is fully equipped to handle Level II and Level IV APIs, for research scale solid dose development,” said Carlos LaCruz, regional sales manager, Colorcon. “This capability is of particular importance for our customers who require this type of equipment and containment capabilities. We can provide specialized support to accelerate development and commercialization of robust, high quality pharmaceutical drug formulations.”

Plinio Sandoval, regional technical manager, Colorcon, said, “To shorten customer’s formulation development time, Colorcon has invested in new-instrumented equipment, including high shear granulation, an instrumented press machine, advanced film coating equipment and USP dissolution apparatus. Access to this advanced technology and analytical tools enables more robust formulation development, provides release profiles and ultimately better prediction for scale-up to manufacturing.”

The technical center provides the capacity to increase the educational programs offered, with additional Colorcon coating and formulation schools included to the 2016 schedule; plus a new formulation school for matrices addressing the markets’ continuing interest for modified release products.

“This investment demonstrates Colorcon’s continued commitment to reducing our customer’s time to market and making a positive contribution to their manufacturing quality and production efficiency,” said Perry Cozzone, president, Americas, Colorcon. “It reinforces our dedication to providing best-in-class products and services through a network of laboratories positioned close to our customers. The combination of our high quality products and this unprecedented service model is the value of Colorcon.”