Almac Sciences and Irish Manufacturing Research Collaborate to Enhance Flow Chemistry Expertise

Innovative 3D printing solutions to design novel flow reactors

Craigavon, Northern Ireland –   2 November 2021 – Almac Sciences, a member of the Almac Group, has initiated a new flow chemistry collaboration with Irish Manufacturing Research (IMR) to design and 3D print novel flow reactors and static mixers. The planned project takes advantage of the design freedom of Additive Manufacturing (AM, an industrialised approach to 3D printing) to make bespoke reactors allowing previously unobtainable chemistry plausible.

Flow chemistry is gaining momentum in its application within the pharma industry by unlocking reaction chemistry not possible in traditional batch mode. At Almac, exploiting continuous flow technology aims to offer clients the best available technology to meet their demanding processing needs of today whilst securing manufacture for the future, by expediting the development of processes where the target chemistry is inherently difficult to scale due to safety concerns.

IMR is a leading manufacturing Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) with labs and industrial pilot lines in Ireland. IMR’s ambition is to accelerate the implementation of key elements of Ireland’s industrial strategy and enable Irish based manufacturers to be early adopters of new technology.

Lead collaborator at IMR, Tristan McCallum said: “I am very excited about our collaboration with Almac Sciences where, with our expertise at IMR, we can support Irish industry to design and produce AM reactors and mixers locally; using the advanced additive manufacturing capability here in Ireland.”

Dr Megan Smyth, Team Leader, Custom and Flow Chemistry at Almac Sciences commented: “This collaboration enables us to move to the next step of our flow chemistry service allowing immediate access to printed reactors with unique properties. This project will ensure we continue to offer our customers best-in-class technical solutions to address the many challenges that contract chemistry brings. As an industry, we need to develop innovative manufacturing routes that opens up access to new raw material supply chains with more secure and mature options. Flow chemistry can assist with this and we are delighted to be progressing it with IMR.”

Earlier this year, Almac Sciences invested over £5million to establish its R&D centre to support increased client demand for its established biocatalysis, flow chemistry and peptides solutions. ”

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