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Press Release / Nov 26, 2024

Hovione Expands Global Spray Drying Capacity with Significant Investment in the USA and Ireland

Hovione has completed significant expansions at its facilities in New Jersey, USA, and Cork, Ireland.

Press Release Site leadership team Hovione Cork
© Alison Miles / OSM Photo

Lisbon, November 25, 2024, Hovione, the specialist integrated CDMO and the leader in spray drying and particle engineering, just completed significant expansions in Europe and the USA. The investments at its East Windsor, New Jersey, and Ringaskiddy, Cork, facilities will significantly increase Hovione's global spray drying capacity and enhance the sites‘capabilities.  

This latest round of investment reinforces Hovione’s position as the global leader in spray drying for pharma applications, an essential technology for enhancing drug solubility and bioavailability. Spray drying converts liquid solutions into fine powders, enabling improved dissolution and absorption of poorly water-soluble drugs. This process is particularly valuable for inhalable therapies and oral formulations with low bioavailability, helping to deliver more effective treatments and ensuring reliable, high-quality healthcare solutions for patients. 

In New Jersey, the investment represents the first step of a multi-year site expansion program, aimed at advancing both spray drying and tableting capabilities. Simultaneously, the Cork facility saw its spray drying capacity increase nearly twofold. Combined, these efforts are creating over 40 new skilled jobs, driving growth and innovation across both locations.

Dr Jean-Luc Herbeaux, Chief Executive Officer of Hovione said: “These expansions, incorporating our latest technologies, reflect Hovione’s unwavering commitment to innovation and manufacturing service excellence. Strengthening our facilities and teams in the USA and Ireland allows us to better serve our customers and provide flexible supply options for both small- and large-scale programs. By increasing our capacity and enhancing our technological capabilities, we are even better equipped to help our customers bring new and more complex drugs to market.”

The investments at both sites are part of Hovione’s long-term strategy to remain at the forefront of pharmaceutical technology. With a 65-year history of continuous improvement, Hovione is driving progress in drug development and manufacturing, offering solutions that enable more effective treatments and improved patient outcomes.

 

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.

 

In the picture from left to right: Dr. Till Riehm, Site Manager - Cork, Hovione; Dr. Jean-Luc Herbeaux, CEO, Hovione; Michael McGrath, the European Commissioner Designate for Democracy, Justice and the Rule of Law; Michael Lohan, CEO, IDA Ireland; Jorge Pastilha, VP Technical Operations - Europe and Asia, and Dr. Paul Downing, Senior Director, Strategic Business Management.

 

 

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A mechanical engineering graduate, this Frenchman is the CEO of the Portuguese pharmaceutical contract manufacturer Hovione. Still owned by the founding family, the company was awarded the 2025 ‘Léonardo de Vinci’ Prize, which recognizes the innovative and successful succession planning of family businesses. With an international career behind him, Jean-Luc Herbeaux is almost more fluent in English than in his native language. At 58, this Frenchman with iceberg-blue eyes is the CEO of Hovione. Founded in the late 1950s, this Portuguese group, with 100% family ownership, has just received the ‘Léonardo de Vinci’ Prize, which highlights entrepreneurial successes tinged with family legacy. While this mid-sized company with a turnover of €500 million maintains a low profile, its pharmaceutical contract manufacturing business is just as obscure to the general public. "Yet, the market for contract manufacturers, or 'contract development manufacturing organizations,' is worth $200 billion", emphasizes the CEO, who has been working in this microcosm for two decades. 500 patents Aware of the stakes, he does not deny "the pharma industry's dependence on Indian and Chinese capabilities". "The fact remains that the trend is toward the regionalization of supply chains, with European manufacturers producing for the Old Continent, American manufacturers for their own market, and so on", he says. And to highlight the foresight of Diane and Ivan Villax, the founding couple, "who thought globally from the very beginning". As a result, the group, with its 500 patents, has factories in China, the United States, and Ireland, without neglecting its home territory. This is evident by the site currently under construction on the banks of the Tagus River, following a €200 million investment. "The heavy engineering and compliance aspects are being finalized, "he explains, emphasizing that this highly regulated sector "is under a microscope". He knows this all too well, as Hovione claims to be involved in 5 to 10% of the drugs approved each year by the FDA, the American drug regulatory agency. Professor from Houston to Japan “In this small world, having a good image is important: this is the case with Jean-Luc, passionate about his work, but who knows how to demystify things”, observes Elie Vannier, former chairman of the board of Hovione. He adds that having an international profile is a strength “in this ecosystem where talent and clients are international”. For his part, Jean-Luc retains from his numerous flights “a taste for films of all genres and from all countries”. The son of an administrative employee in secondary schools and an auto insurance expert, the youngest of three children moved around according to his parents' job transfers. He was born in Meaux, grew up in Chartres, and attended the University of Technology of Compiègne, “which already offered programs abroad”. Thus, he left a mechanical engineering internship at a Dior perfume factory to join the University of Houston in Texas, "carrying a 20 kg backpack". Despite his then-limited command of English, he earned a doctorate, became a professor, and met an American woman who would become his wife and the mother of their two children. Next came the University of Kanazawa in Japan. Alas! Disappointed by the academic world, "where you have to fight to get resources", he succumbed to the allure of industry and joined the American chemical company Rohm and Haas, which had fallen under the control of the German company Evonik. 80 million patients He spent twenty years there, in Germany and Singapore, before "accepting the offers from headhunters". He then accepted Hovione's offer, who appointed him Chief Operating Officer in 2020, then CEO two years later, making him the first CEO not from the founding family. The family remains the sole shareholder, which earned the company the ‘Léonardo de Vinci’ Prize, created by the Association Les Hénokiens and the Clos Lucé. Having settled near Lisbon, he substituted walking for combat sports, "having been burned by the injuries of some friends". He also mentioned that Hovione, whose clients include 19 of the world's 20 largest pharmaceutical companies, helps treat more than 80 million patients.   (Translated version)   Read the original and full article in French on LesEchos.fr  

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