The award was presented by the Lord Lieutenant of Clwyd, Henry Fetherstonhaugh, OBE, in a special ceremony at the company’s global headquarters in Deeside Industrial Park, Flintshire.
The Queen’s Award for Enterprise is the UK’s highest accolade for business success. SGS Quay Pharma won its award for International Trade, recognising in particular the strength of its export sales which, since 2010, have always been more than 55% of its business. In the last 3 years, overseas sales have more than doubled.
SGS Quay Pharma has enjoyed notable success in the United States, where it has now opened a dedicated sales office and development and manufacturing facility. Other significant new markets include Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Spain, Iceland, South Korea and Australia.
One of the major reasons for this continued success in recent years has been the company’s pioneering work in live biotherapeutics, which focus on the use of microbes to illicit a pharmaceutical response, specifically targeted at the immune system. SGS Quay Pharma was the first globally licensed CDMO able to support this exciting new field of pharmaceutical therapies, which might result in a paradigm shift in the way diseases are treated.
The company has continued to invest to support its ongoing expansion. As well as the establishment of its US operation, this has included the opening of a second 22,500 ft2 laboratory and office facility, close to its headquarters in Deeside Industrial Park, alongside the creation of specialised manufacturing spaces and the purchase of specialist equipment to support and expand its range of services.
“We were delighted to welcome the Lord Lieutenant to our headquarters and to be able to share this important award with our team, who have all been critical to our achieving this honour,” said SGS Quay Pharma’s Commercial Operations Director Maireadh Pedersen.
“This is an exciting time for pharmaceutical outsourcing, and we have ambitious plans to continue to develop our global business. The Queen’s Award provides the ideal foundation for the next phase of our growth.”
Established in 2002, SGS Quay Pharma has built a strong reputation for the contract development and clinical manufacture of innovative medicines, with particular expertise in oral dosage form design and semi solids formulation and development, and the ability to resolve the challenges of drugs that are known to be difficult to absorb within the body.
The company’s range of services includes early stage (pre-clinical) formulation development, novel drug delivery design, analytical R&D development, stability testing, and clinical trial manufacture, commercial manufacture and packing of new drug compounds. The company became part of SGS, the Swiss-based world leading Testing, Inspection and Certification (TIC) specialist, in December 2021.