The Optima Group is building a CSPE Center at its headquarters in Schwaebisch Hall to be used for the assembly and comprehensive commissioning of pharmaceutical filling lines. This will expand the production area by around 4300 sqm and also provide additional office space.. The investment is credited to a high volume of orders and ongoing developments in the group’s pharma division.
The group is reportedly experiencing high demand for filling and packaging solutions, particularly in its pharma division, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a short-term increase in the already high order backlog caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Optima Pharma opened its first CSPE (Comprehensive Scientific Process Engineering) centre at its headquarters in Schwaebisch Hall, Germany, in June, 2019. The centre has since been fully utilised, so the current project has been designed to be 25% larger, with an almost identical design. Completion is planned for late 2021. The building covers a total area of 7000 sqm and enables joint factory acceptance tests to be done on the filling and closing systems and isolators under realistic production conditions.
In the approximately 4300 sqm assembly area, pharmaceutical lines will be supplied with process heating and cooling as well as demineralised water and compressed air via supply lines during commissioning, cycle development and integrated FAT (iFAT). The testing is designed to ensure both the subsequent installation and the site acceptance test (SAT) at the customer's site proceed faster. The building will be equipped with a separate logistics area.
"Integration levels are set to become even greater in future, as part of CSPE 2.0. Work that in the past typically took place on the customer's site will have already been carried out to an even greater extent in one of our CSPE Centers," said Gerhard Breu, Chairman of the Optima Pharma Division. Another customer request concerned GMP-compliant cycle development, which can be handled entirely by Optima Pharma in the future. "This again significantly increases the level of integration, which, in turn, shortens the commissioning phase at the customer's site even further.”