The last 20 years have seen a significant increase in the need for contained handling and processing in the pharmaceutical and life science industries, driven by the development of more potent APIs and a stronger focus on health and safety by the regulatory authorities.
Working with Highly Potent APIs
Established standards and practices in western countries are now being adopted in emerging geographies as mandatory procedures migrate from using PPE (personal protection equipment) to maintain operator safety to ensuring at-source containment. The message has never been clearer: it is the first duty of the employer to protect the health of their staff; and PPE has been found to be inadequate during modern pharmaceutical drug production.
In addition, it is becoming increasingly apparent to manufacturers that the implementation of seamless containment solutions offers considerable housekeeping benefits, such as
- faster changeover times owing to reduced (room) cleaning
- significantly decreased cross-contamination risks
- substantial savings (air filters, air suits, contaminated cleaning fluid, for example).
GEA has pioneered contained material handling for many years and has been instrumental in developing state-of-the-art solutions.
Even for experienced manufacturers, however, the selection, placement and implementation of suitable containment equipment can be a daunting task; it requires an in depth understanding of the overall process, primarily to ensure that the chosen equipment performs at the necessary level, but also, from a financial point of view, to prevent any expensive and unnecessary investment into an over-performing solution.
GEA not only offers the largest variety of robust and compliant hardware solutions for contained materials handling, it also boasts unrivalled expertise in identifying the most appropriate solution and a thorough understanding of containment risk analysis.
GEA can assist and advise you to determine what level of containment is required where and when, optimizing the manufacturing process and making it efficient, safe and cost-effective. We provide tailor-made containment for the pharmaceutical industry — for now and for the future.
