News – full story

GLAXOSMITHKLINE took the top prize at the IChemE 2012 Awards last night in recognition of its radical change in the manufacture of pharmaceuticals. 

The company won the Outstanding Achievement in Chemical Engineering Award alongside project partners GEA, Siemens, Sagentia and the Universities of Newcastle, Warwick and Surrey. The winning entry, which also earned the Chemical Engineering Project of the Year Award, proved that tablet production can move on from centuries-old, stepwise and time-consuming batch processing.

The outcome is a fully-integrated and closely-controlled process that ensures consistency while reducing costs by 20%, the process equipment footprint by a factor of ten, and the capital cost by a factor of three.

Frank Roche, who collected the award on behalf of GSK and its project partners, told tce that tablets produced by continuous manufacture could be on sale within three years. He said the new process would best suit tablets produced at high volume and would only be used for new drugs, adding that manufacturers would likely not want to apply it to existing drugs as they would have to scrap already-approved production processes only to go through the lengthy approval process once again.

Asked why it has taken so long to switch from batch to continuous processing, Roche said it was a coming together of factors including new enabling technology, developed along with project partners, and a move away from less prescriptive regulation.

In what proved to be a successful night for the healthcare major, GSK also won the Health and Safety Award for its liquid dispensing technology (LDT) a new tablet-manufacturing process that delivers microgramme doses with unparalleled precision and eliminates the need for high containment equipment and cumbersome personnel respirators.

The night’s other biggest winner was Sellafield Ltd, winning the Nuclear Innovation Award and the Core Chemical Engineering Award.

Other winners included Renmatix, winner of the Bioprocessing Award for creating a faster and less expensive method of producing sugar from non-food biomass, to create feedstocks for paints and plastics. Already scaled up by 3,000 over three years, this development not only helps to replace petroleum-derived feedstocks but also offers to ease food pressures as growing populations and an intense drought in the US have made staples like wheat more scarce and expensive, pushing many into food poverty.

Air Products won the Education and Training Award for establishing a graduate council to work with new employees and the local community, and positively influence the public perception of engineering. Huntsman Pigments won the Innovative Product Award for developing a coating that reflects infrared light to keep buildings cooler. Residents can now turn off their air conditioners and cut their energy costs.

New Zealand-based company Aurecon won the Food and Drink Award in recognition of its salt production facilities where capacity is increased by 63%, while energy increases have risen by only 10%. Australian chemical engineers celebrated a double success with SUSOP winning the Sustainable Technology Award and chemical engineers from Monash University being presented with the Innovation for Resource-Poor People Award for their Harry Potter-inspired blood test.

Elsewhere, The University of Southampton won the Water Management and Supply Award, Malaysia-based Denny KS Ng won the Young Chemical Engineer of the Year Award and Martin Tangney from Celtic Renewables lifted the Innovator of the Year Award.

IChemE CEO David Brown says the range of award winners highlights the diversity of the profession: “Chemical engineers are working all over the world on innovative projects and finding solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing society today – a growing demand for secure and sustainable energy, access to clean and plentiful water supplies, food and nutrition and societal health and wellbeing. The IChemE Awards give us a platform to recognise some of the best work taking place all over the world throughout the chemical and process engineering community.”

More than 500 chemical engineers and invited guests from around the world attended the event in Manchester, UK which was hosted by journalist and TV presenter Colin Murray.