Fermion has unveiled plans to invest €30 million in a API manufacturing facility expansion. Beginning in 2018, the Hanko plant located in the south of Finland, will start operating new API manufacturing facilities including 76 m3 reactor space, incremental to Fermion’s current total reactor volume of 320 m3. With best-in-class automated systems, controlled material flows, isolators and smart infrastructure the new facilities will process not only standard but also potent APIs. There will be a reactor space of 25 m3 for OEB5 compounds—containment level down to 0,1 µg/m3—and the rest of the new capacity is equipped for compounds requiring a containment level of 1 – 10 µg/m3.

With the new, modern facilities Fermion says it will be prepared to meet tightening regulatory requirements and better positioned to support both current and new business.
“The expansion lifts Fermion to a new level in the global arena of API and especially HAPI manufacturing, improving Fermion’s capability to meet increasing demand. Fermion will continue to ensure high quality and delivery reliability of its products,” said Arto Toivonen, president, Fermion. “The new unit alone will be able to produce 100 metric tons HPAPI per year increasing the total production capacity of Fermion to over 400 metric tons API/year. Fermion’s scale of HPAPI development and production will now be complete with capabilities from grams to tons.”

Fermion’s investment of €30 million in Hanko is the largest in the history of the company since 1970 and also turns a new page in the history of the Finnish pharmaceutical industry.

The Hanko plant is Fermion’s largest production facility with an annual API capacity of approximately 300 metric tons. The Hanko plant supports the full scale of commercial API manufacturing, both generic and custom APIs. The plant consists of three operational units, two dedicated for intermediate production and the third, fully automated unit inaugurated in 2001 produces APIs. The plant is equipped with dryers and mills for API micronization and has a Buss loop reactor for hydrogenations as well as an on-site incinerator of VOC gases and a biological wastewater treatment facility.

Construction of the new facility will start in the summer of 2016 and the inauguration will be celebrated in Q2 2018.