New plant for Sanofi-Synthelabo

The so-called PLATINE (PLavix, Aprovel, Technologie INtegree et Environnee) unit is a three-storey manufacturing facility with a total surface area of 9,000m2 that has been constructed over the last 18 months at a cost of €25 million.

The new manufacturing facility was made necessary by the steady increase in production volumes for Aprovel and Plavix, which had sales in the first nine months of the year of €506 million and €964 million, respectively. Sales of Aprovel were up 27 per cent in the period, while Plavix leaped nearly 40 per cent. Both drugs are co-promoted with Bristol-Myers Squibb of the US.

The new unit will make it possible to manufacture more than 1.5 billion additional tablets (around 40 million boxes of medicines), which accounts for an additional capacity of 30 per cent for the Ambares production site, said Sanofi-Synthelabo.

The company noted that a number of innovations have been implemented at the plant. For example, the use of gravity to transfer raw materials minimises handling and helps keep products confined to their designated areas, it said. This and other refinements have made it possible to increase the size of batches four-fold, meaning that a batch of clopidogrel will now include 10 million tablets compared to 2.5 million formerly.

Ambares is Sanofi-Synthelabo's major pharmaceutical manufacturing site and produces more than 120 million packaged units of solid pharmaceutical forms (tablets and capsules) as well as injectable forms.