‘Continuous manufacturing with modular plants for medicines‘ was the subject of one-day symposium at University Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, March 6, 2025. The symposium was well organized with a shop visit to the construction halls of 18 m height containing various modular plants under construction, as a highlight. In total 80 participants from Europe, Canada, and Singapore had lively discussions. I was glad to be one of them.
The speakers were from pharma industries. To name: Bert Metten of Anjinomoto Bio-pharma, Gareth Alford of AstraZeneca, David Linder of Hoffmann La Roche, Rick Spencer of Eli Lilly, and Gabriel Loh of A*STAR ISCE2, Singapore. All talked about modular process design, and operation for continuous processing. Pharmaceuticals production in a plant means that by running campaigns, typically 8 to 12 different medicines or Active Pharma Ingredients (API’s) per year are produced. This means that cleaning in between campaigns is an essential process step. It also means that some modules have to be replaced by others. This change of modules can be done for some plants in a few days. David Lindner of Hoffman La Roche mentioned that they had combinations of continuous (80 %) and batch (20 %) processing modules.
All speakers reported that their company had developed procedures for development, design and operating continuous processing, but that these procedures were far from complete for all countries where they have production plants. Particular emphasis was given process control of individual modules by Programmable Logic Controls (PLC) and Distributed Process Control (DCS) for the whole plant. There was a debate about the use of Process Analytical Technology (PAT) for control.
Bert Metten revealed that in 2011 his company started with developing continuous processing for pharma and that they are in contact with Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) companies , ZETON, Microinnova and Flowid. Specific reactors reported were a static mixer reactor, and coiled tube reactor,
The symposium was organised by ZETON, a Design-Build (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) company, located in Enschede and specialized in modular design, and construction, and Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) at their workshop. As a proof that continuous processing in modular plants is reality Hoffmann La Roche showed a picture of a commercial plant containing ZETON modules.