Roller compactor bolsters Juniper's granulation capabilities
Juniper will add the Gerteis MINI-PACTOR to its granulation capabilities at its facility in Nottingham, UK, and has confirmed to this publication it will be operational by the end of the year.
The roller compactor can process up to100kg/h, and will be used by the firm for early phase formulation development, clinical trial production, and small scale commercial manufacture.
The investment, the firm said, was made on the back of customer demand and is consistent with recent investments by the contract development and manufacturing organisation (CDMO) in increasing its enabling technologies offering.
“We have and continue to invest in technologies which enable molecules to be delivered more effectively,” Juniper’s CEO Nikin Patel told in-Pharmatechnologist at the CPhI Worldwide event in Barcelona earlier this month.
“These technologies, while not proprietary, do take a lot of know-how and resources to actually develop and operate.”
Over the past couple of years, Juniper has added other equipment to support such services as spray-drying, hot melt extrusion, micro-dosing, and topical/semi-solid manufacturing.
By offering these technologies, Juniper is able to compete with some of the larger global CDMOs, Nikin continued.
“There are other companies involved in some of these technologies but these techs are not run of the mill, but that’s where we’re adding the value.”
One such global rival is Catalent, which recently bolstered its bioavailability offerings through the acquisition of spray dried dispersion specialist Pharmatek Laboratories.
“[Catalent] is a threat, as are a handful of other companies but it all comes down to their ability to deliver. It’s easy to acquire expertise, but to truly deliver and generate projects, only time will tell.”
As with all GMP equipment the equipment will service one project at a time, but can be rapidly cleaned validated and commissioned for the next client project
