Equipment for manufacturing medicinal products

The installation of different skids to expand the production of medicinal products and syrups at one of Avva Pharmaceuticals’ plants.

- Customer

AVVA Pharmaceuticals AG is a major pharmaceutical company operating in over 40 countries worldwide. They have over 25 years’ experience in the pharmaceutical industry.

The customer is continuously growing and needed to expand one of their production plants.

- Project

They needed a fully automatic and very complex production plant for liquid pharmaceutical formulations (syrups and suspensions) that could be used for manufacturing a certain product while being cleaned and prepared for manufacturing another product at the same time.

The plant had to be connected to three different filling lines. The suspensions also required recirculation during the process to avoid solid particle sedimentation. It had to be equipped with a CIP system and SCADA.

- Installation characteristics

The following equipment was installed in one area:

two 2400 L tanks (one for preparation and one for storage); a 250 L tank (for preparing APIs and small batches); two manifolds (connecting the plant with three filling lines and the CIP system); a blender; pumps.

A 250 L tank (for preparing APIs and small batches) was installed in an ATEX zone where explosive ingredients are used.

A CIP unit and cooling and heating stations for the reactors were installed in the technical zone.

The SCADA system is based on WinCC Professional with five thin clients.

- Special features

The installed system with manifolds enables the manufacture of different product types while performing CIP cleaning at the same time. As such, the system was highly complex, so the interface was developed to make it as intuitive as possible and easier to use.

The large tanks are equipped with magnetic agitators that help keep the suspension homogeneous during the final production stage.

The diaphragm valve manifolds used the mixproof model and each unit was created with three valves to detect any potential leaks.