Hovione’s historic site in Loures has been expanded to meet demand and is now operating at full capacity.

This Lisbon-based flagship company has developed innovative production techniques to serve laboratories around the world

On the outskirts of Loures, in the periphery of Lisbon, a maze of multicolored pipes covers the walls of the Hovione factory. This industrial site, where signs warn of an “explosive atmosphere,” houses the production of active pharmaceutical ingredients — the core business of this company with Portuguese origins generating annual revenues of more than half a billion euros.

“The products that leave here are shipped to every continent,” explains Diane Villax, the family matriarch. At 91, her voice moves effortlessly between English, French, and Portuguese — a cosmopolitan streak inseparable from the history of Hovione and the Villax family, its founders.

The epic began with an exile: that of Ivan Villax in 1948. With a toothbrush in one pocket and his chemistry degree in the other, the 23-year-old anti-communist fled his native Hungary with relatives hunted by the Soviet regime. After a stop in Clermont-Ferrand, he dropped anchor in Lisbon, where he met Diane, from a family of sugar industrialists.

One year after their marriage, they co-founded Hovione in 1959 with two other Hungarian refugees.

The early days were artisanal: the company’s laboratory was located in the basement of the family home. “One of my earliest childhood memories is of adults in white lab coats. I knew how to use a fire extinguisher at six!” smiles Peter Villax, son of Ivan and Diane, who worked for Hovione for more than thirty years.

Very early on, the duo expanded internationally, notably into Japan. The 1980s were prosperous years: growth surged at 20% annually. Then transformation accelerated with the arrival of new technologies in the early 1990s. Today, “the time required to move from test tube to industrial scale has been reduced to a few weeks, compared with six months in the past,” notes Peter Villax.

The American adventure

Sixty-seven years after its creation, the company — now headquartered in Switzerland — employs 2,400 people. Through medicines incorporating its active ingredients, Hovione claims to treats around an estimated 80 million patients worldwide each year.

The Loures site has been expanded, and production has spread to Ireland, the United States, and Macao. The cellar at 1 Travessa do Ferreiro, where the story began, is now a distant memory.

Little known to the general public, Hovione is nevertheless a key link in the pharmaceutical value chain: it develops and manufactures molecules for 19 of the world’s 20 largest laboratories.

Its expansion has been fueled by favorable market conditions.

“Pharmaceutical manufacturers increasingly rely on outsourcing for the production of active ingredients,” notes Loïc Plantevin, a pharma specialist at Bain & Company. “Historically, major groups chose to allocate more capital to research than to manufacturing, while biotech companies — which now drive most of the market’s growth — are not designed to build factories.”
Far from resting on its achievements, the company has transformed its offering.

“While the founders initially focused on generic active ingredients, Hovione has evolved toward more complex molecules and formulations, produced within exclusive partnerships with its clients,” explains Jean-Luc Herbeaux, a French national and the company’s CEO since 2022.

This shift reflects a deeper trend. “For several years now, active ingredients have become a more differentiated market and less sensitive to price,” adds Loïc Plantevin. “Competitiveness is now linked to know-how and advanced production technologies, which require substantial investment.”

Hovione is the world champion of spray drying, a technology enabling the production of soluble powders. With the expansion of its New Jersey site, the company aims to double its U.S. capacity — a country that accounts for 60% of its sales.

Despite Donald Trump’s attacks on the pharmaceutical sector, which he claims to have brought to heel by forcing price cuts, Hovione remains confident. “We are in the U.S. to grow, and that ambition goes beyond the momentum created by the American administration,” assures Jean-Luc Herbeaux. “Our customers there are asking us to help them produce in the United States over the long term.”

Commitment to cutting-edge research and the search for talent are deeply rooted in the company’s DNA. “In his later years, my father collaborated with Nobel Prize–winning chemist Geoffrey Wilkinson. Together, they would go to the Hovione lab to run experiments — just ‘for fun,’ as they put it,” recalls Peter Villax.

The group is the largest employer of PhD students in Portugal and has forged partnerships with several national universities.

“In some ways, Hovione resembles a university,” he continues. “Despite the sensitive nature of our technologies, we publish many academic research papers.”

In search of lost sovereignty

To preserve cohesion, the Villax family adheres to strict governance. “Unlike many Portuguese family businesses, most members of the third generation do not work in the company,” notes Duarte Pitta Ferraz of consulting firm Ivens in Porto. “Several independent directors sit on the board. The family’s role is to define values and long-term vision, not to manage day-to-day operations.”

This responsibility is fully embraced by Jean-Luc Herbeaux. Since joining the group in 2020 as chief operating officer, sales have doubled.

“My priority was to refocus the group,” says the engineer, who previously worked for German chemical giant Evonik. “We developed spray drying, invested in a new tablet-manufacturing process, and increased production speed through a new model that allows our clients to access all our services at a single industrial site.”

A member of the European Fine Chemicals Group (EFCG), Hovione is actively defending European pharmaceutical manufacturing — a sector under strain.

According to a study by the French Union of Organic Chemical Synthesis Industries (Sicos), Europe’s share of global active ingredient production has fallen from 48% to 30% in ten years, to the benefit of India and China.

The reasons include production cost gaps — raw materials, energy — as well as the burden of European administrative and regulatory procedures, explains Maggie Saykali, director at the EFCG.

“If we start a price war with our Asian competitors, we will not win it,” she admits. “It is better to compete on quality, innovation, and sovereignty over our value chain.”

It took the Covid-19 pandemic and severe shortages for Europe to awaken. Last March, the European Commission proposed legislation on critical medicines. But the race against time has already begun.

“China is increasingly using pharmaceutical ingredients as a tool of geopolitical pressure,” warns Maggie Saykali. “It is urgent to preserve European players like Hovione, focused on process innovation — which allows medicines to be produced with higher quality and greater environmental responsibility.”

With a new site under construction in Seixal, on the southern bank of the Tagus River, the Lisbon star has not finished shining in the orbit of the global pharmaceutical industry.

(This is a translation from the original article)

Read the original article on lexpress.fr