Dales pharmaceuticals boosts its manufacturing capabilities
The continuing rationalisation of big pharma manufacturing has resulted in rapid growth of the third party contract manufacturing sector. The value of the UK market is now estimated at £800m (€1,272m) and rising, compared with £600m (€954m) three years ago.
To take advantage of this upturn Dales Pharmaceuticals, based in Skipton in the UK, has more than trebled its manufacturing capacity through a £2.8m (€4.5m) expansion programme that has seen the construction of a new building, the refurbishment of the existing facility and the installation of new automated production lines.
The company, which is the manufacturing arm of Dechra Pharmaceuticals, now operates with around 70 staff in a total area of some 75,000 square feet. Contract manufacturing accounts for 45% of Dales' business, and of this 90% consists of human pharmaceuticals produced on behalf of more than 50 external customers.
The remaining 55% of the business comprises veterinary products for the Arnolds business arm of Dechra.
The installation of the new manufacturing and packing lines has given the company greater flexibility in its scale of batch production. It can now handle from multi-million batches of tablets and capsules down to a few thousand special products or clinical trial quantities. As well as tablets and capsules, it can also handle powders, oral liquids, suspensions, pastes, gels and ointments and can pack into bottles, jars, blisterpacks, sachets, tubes, strip packs, cartons and oral dosing syringes. Among its core competences are granulation, fluid bed drying, tabletting, sugar and film coating, capsule filling and packing and terminally sterilised vials.
'These state-of-the-art production facilities exceed customer expectations and combined with our increased efficiency and high service levels mean that we are truly customer focused,' said Dales production director Mike Annice.