Hovione Completes Expansion of Loures, Portugal Tablet Manufacturing Center

Editor’s Take: Hovione can manufacture amorphous solid dispersions by spray drying and tablet them into finished forms in one place.

Hovione completed its expansion of the Loures, Portugal tablet development and manufacturing center. This adds 25% more commercial-scale batch tableting capacity for integrated supply of oral solid dosage products.

According to the company, the completion also wraps up an investment cycle of more than €40 million (US$46.7 million). The investment created 50 skilled jobs in production, engineering, quality, science, and technology. Hovione’s Sete Casas facility in Loures already employs approximately 1250 people.

How Hovione Benefits

By adding this capacity, Hovione strengthens its ability to manufacturing amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs) by spray drying. Not only that, it then allows these ASDs to be tableted into finished oral dosage forms, all at a single site.

Hovione added an additional line mirroring the original unit across all local operations. These include dispensing, blending, dry granulation, tableting, and film coating.

The company says demand for single-site service is growing. Poor solubility can slow development timelines for over 70% of new molecular entities. Therefore, ASD by spray drying is seen as a vital solution.

Key to Growth in Portugal

António Almeida and Marco Gil, Co-CEOs of Hovione, issued a joint statement.

“This investment completes our existing capabilities in Portugal and strengthens the competitiveness of our operations,” Almeida and Gil said. “It gives us greater scale and flexibility to respond to the [industry’s] needs. [These include] seeking to develop new medicines more quickly and build more resilient supply chains closer to its markets. This is an important step in continuing to support our customers internationally.”

Also included as part of the expansion in Loures, in-process control and staging space sized to the increased production capacity.