Press Room

Press Release / Jan 18, 2024

Hovione certified as a Top Employer in all of its manufacturing sites

Hovione has been recognized as a Top Employer in all four of its manufacturing sites, in Lisbon (Portugal), Cork (Ireland), East Windsor (NJ) and Macau.

Top Employer 2024 seals | Hovione
  • Hovione has been recognized as a Top Employer in all four of its manufacturing sites, in Lisbon (Portugal), Cork (Ireland), East Windsor (NJ) and Macau.
  • Hovione is the first company to be certified as a Top Employer in Macau.
  • Hovione’s 3 other sites, who had achieved Top Employer status in 2023, showed improved results this year.
     

Lisbon, January 18, 2024, Hovione, the specialist integrated CDMO, leader in spray drying and particle engineering, is delighted to announce that it has been recognized as a Top Employer in all four of its manufacturing sites. Hovione is the first ever company to be certified as a Top Employer in Macau.

This marks a significant milestone in the company's commitment to fostering a supportive workplace environment and providing meaningful and rewarding roles for its team members. It also demonstrates that “One Hovione”, a company´s strategic initiative to give team members an equally high-quality experience across all locations, is delivering. 

The certification program by the Top Employers Institute evaluates organizations through their participation in and outcomes of the HR Best Practices Survey. This comprehensive survey encompasses six domains and addresses 20 topics from Career Development to Leadership and from Employee Wellbeing to Equity & Inclusion and Wellbeing, amongst others. The program has certified and recognized over 2,300 Top Employers in 121 countries/regions across five continents. 

"Hovione is a company committed to excellence and differentiation and being a Top Employer is an integral component of Hovione's People Strategy. I am pleased to see that our continuous improvement program, supported by Top Employer´s best practices benchmarks, resulted in our progressing along multiple dimensions at all our locations”, commented Ilda Ventura, Vice-President for Human Resources and Member of the Management Board of Hovione.  
 

Macau Special Administrative Region

Douglas Lau, Human Resources Director for Hovione Macau, said that “It is a real achievement to be the first company in Macau to be a Top Employer. This demonstrates that companies in Macau can offer the same high quality workplace environment as anywhere else in the world. Coming so soon after Hovione was awarded the Medal of Merit from the Macau Government, it is also a further demonstration of how Hovione creates jobs that have real value to both our team members and the wider society.

Portugal

Catarina Tendeiro, HR Senior Director for Hovione Portugal, said that “We are thrilled to announce that Hovione has once again been recognized as Top Employer. This is a confirmation of our ongoing commitment to developing an exceptional workplace environment for our team members, who represent our most significant resource and our company´s main differentiator. I was especially pleased that this year’s report demonstrated improvement in several key areas, including Business and People Strategy, Leadership, Performance and Career and Learning. This demonstrates our desire to listen to feedback and to continue to improve our workplace experience. 

USA

Erin Tetreault, HR Director for Hovione New Jersey said, “We are thrilled to announce that Hovione has once again been certified as a Top Employer. We believe that our people are our strongest asset and this certification demonstrates our ongoing commitment to create a workplace culture that goes beyond safety and quality and helps all team members to feel truly valued. I was especially pleased that this years’ report showed improvement in several key areas, including Leadership, Work Environment and Employee Wellbeing. This demonstrates our desire to listen to feedback and to continue to improve our workplace experience."

Ireland

Imelda Cummins, HR Director for Hovione Ireland commented, “We are delighted that Hovione has once again been certified as a Top Employer. Hovione´s team members represent our strongest asset and enable us to offer our customers the high-quality products and services that Hovione is known for. It also shows our ongoing commitment to developing a great workplace environment. I was especially pleased that this year’s report demonstrated improvement in several key areas, including Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Learning, Sustainability and Career Development. This demonstrates our desire to listen to feedback and to continue to improve our workplace experience.

 

About Hovione
Hovione is an international company with over 60 years of experience in pharmaceutical development and manufacturing operations. As a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization (CDMO) it has a fully integrated offering of services for drug substances, drug product intermediates and drug products. The company has four FDA inspected sites in the USA, Portugal, Ireland and China and development laboratories in Lisbon, Portugal and New Jersey, USA. Hovione provides pharmaceutical customers services for the development and compliant manufacture of innovative drugs, including highly potent compounds, and customized product solutions across the entire drug life cycle. In the inhalation area, Hovione offers a complete range of services, from API, formulation development and manufacturing, capsule filling and devices.  
 
Hovione's culture is based on innovation, quality and dependability. Hovione is a member of Rx-360, EFCG and participates actively in industry quality improvement initiatives to lead new global industry standards.
 

About Top Employers Institute
Top Employers Institute is the global authority on recognising excellence in People Practices. We help accelerate these practices to enrich the world of work. Through the Top Employers Institute Certification Programme, participating companies can be validated, certified, and recognised as an employer of choice. In 2024, Top Employers Institute has certified more than 2300 organisations in 121 countries/regions. These certified Top Employers positively impact the lives of over 12 million employees globally.
 

 

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Key Takeaways Commissioning a US-based ConsiGma CDC Flex line enables end-to-end spray drying-to-tablet manufacture within a single site and quality system, reducing comparability and technology-transfer burdens. Elimination of conventional scale-up is enabled by using the same equipment from early development through commercial supply, minimizing engineering runs and conserving scarce API. Operational flexibility spans batch or continuous modes and 1–200 kg/h throughput, with scale adjustment achieved by switching continuous blenders rather than replatforming processes. High-containment design to 1 µg/m³ expands suitability for highly potent oral solid-dose programs while maintaining integrated development-to-commercial workflows. Regulatory momentum for continuous manufacturing is supported by ICH Q13 harmonization, increasing FDA approvals, and platforms leveraging inline PAT and automated control suites for real-time quality assurance. Hovione announced on Oct. 5, 2026, that it will commission the ConsiGma CDC Flex, a next-generation continuous direct compression tableting platform jointly developed with GEA. The investment is designed to link amorphous solid dispersion manufacturing via spray drying with commercial tablet production at a single US site operating under one quality system. The line will run in either continuous or batch mode at throughputs from 1 to 200 kg/h. Formulation development can begin with as little as 1.5 kg of material, and the same equipment can then support everything from very small clinical batches to large commercial runs, enabled by a design that allows the system to switch between continuous blenders of different sizes. The installation will also be contained to 1 µg/m³ to accommodate highly potent compounds. "Hovione will be the first company in the world to offer the ConsiGma® CDC Flex, bringing this next-generation technology with unprecedented flexibility, simplicity and cost-efficiency in continuous tableting," said Marco Gil and António Almeida, co-CEOs, Hovione, said in a press release. "This investment also advances our strategy of building integrated capabilities close to customers in key markets. By adding this new line at East Windsor, we are broadening access to this technology in the U.S. and giving customers a more direct and accelerated path for developing and commercializing complex oral medicines." What Does a Single Development-To-Commercial Line Change? For formulators and process engineers, the most consequential claim is the removal of traditional scale-up. Moving a process from development equipment to commercial equipment typically requires engineering runs, bridging work, and consumption of scarce API, all of which weigh heavily on early programs with limited material. "Installing the CDC Flex at 89 Twin Rivers makes continuous tableting part of an integrated US development and manufacturing workflow," said David Basile, Vice President of Technical Operations, Hovione, in the press release. "Customers can move from formulation and particle engineering to commercial tablets with one Hovione team and one quality system, eliminating traditional scale-up while gaining greater production flexibility, process control and supply continuity." Co-locating spray drying and tableting is also significant because amorphous solid dispersions remain a primary solubility-enhancement route for poorly soluble molecules, and transferring intermediates between sites or vendors adds technology transfer and comparability burdens. The new line builds on the company's earlier US expansion; Hovione recently completed a $100 million investment to bolster US capacity in particle design, amorphous solid dispersions via spray drying, and batch and continuous tableting. How Is the Regulatory Environment Shaping Continuous Tableting Adoption? The company points to the 2022 adoption of ICH Q13, which provides harmonized guidance for continuous manufacturing of drug substances and drug products across the US, Europe, and Japan. Hovione reports that, as of 2024, FDA alone had approved 17 products manufactured under the guidance. Speaking on ICH Q13, FDA's Kelley Burridge, PhD, "Perceived barriers to continuous manufacturing have been falling one by one," and noted an FDA publication showing faster approval times for products with continuous manufacturing elements than for comparable batch products. The platform incorporates inline process analytical technology and automated controls for real-time quality monitoring, along with SimpleCT, an automation and control suite intended to support a single process from development through commercial supply. For sponsors weighing supply resilience and regional sourcing, the East Windsor installation extends a capability that Hovione says only it currently offers as a contract development and manufacturing organization.   Read the full article at PharmTech.com  

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Formulation Development/Drug Product Manufacturing  Hovione Completes $46-M Tablet Mfg Facility Expansion  Hovione, a CDMO of drug substances and drug products, has completed an expansion of its tablet development and manufacturing center at its main global campus in Loures, Portugal, adding 25% more commercial-scale batch tableting capacity for oral solid dosage products. The expansion strengthens integrated manufacture of amorphous solid dispersions by spray drying and tableting at a single site. The recently inaugurated expansion completes an investment cycle of more than EUR 40 million ($46 million).  Hovione expanded its batch tableting capacity by adding an additional line mirroring the original unit across every local operation: dispensing, blending, dry granulation, tableting, and film coating. The mirrored configuration reinforces capacity at the 300 kg to 400 kg batch scale and provides both redundancy and like-for-like product transfers between lines. Supporting areas, including in-process control and staging space sized to the increased production capacity, were also added as part of the expansion.  Read the full article at DCATVCI.org  

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The company is building out more than 200,000 square feet of space in New Jersey. In April, Contract Pharma had the opportunity to tour Hovione’s expanded manufacturing facility in East Windsor, NJ. The company is planning a formal ribbon-cutting this fall; before that, we got an inside look at some new features. Having established United States operations in 2002, Hovione now has more than 200,000 square feet of space in New Jersey. This will be developed into a large, integrated campus in the next five to ten years. Overall, the company’s recent NJ expansion, which began in 2025, has tripled its total spray-drying capacity in the U.S. Future Facility Upgrades A 125,000-square-foot greenfield acquired by Hovione at the East Windsor campus will eventually be a large-scale production site. This includes enhanced quality control and R&D capabilities. Together, all this adds to Hovione’s stable of manufacturing sites, R&D centers, and other offices spread across three continents. Key to the expansion is a targeted reduction of Hovione’s carbon footprint by 40% by the year 2030. Part of this goal is embracing new and/or changing solvent types to help meet sustainability standards. Additionally, the company says automation that has been put in place at its Portugal site will be replicated in NJ. Hovione Aligns NJ Operations At the Drug, Chemical & Associated Technologies Association (DCAT) Week in New York in March, Contract Pharma met with Hovione. There, David Basile, Vice President of Technical Operations—Americas, further illustrated the New Jersey expansion. “Hovione aims to build an equivalent manufacturing network, where clients can go to any site across the globe,” Basile said. “The design of the facility has been well-thought through with material flows [and] gravity-fed processes. It’s scalable. We call each one of these building segments a finger. You can copy and paste these fingers, and they are built to house both spray drying and drug product assets.” Ultimately, with these moves and a strategic partnership model, Hovione aims to provide customers an opportunity to co-invest and access the company’s proprietary knowledge and assets to accelerate programs and create long-term value. Read the full article at ContractPharma.com    

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