Transcription
Bora Pharmaceuticals is a global organization and contract manufacturing organization (CDMO), providing development and manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical industry. With 2,500 employees over 10 sites worldwide, distributing more than 100 markets, its commitment to sustainability has become a “right to operate” for pharmaceutical companies with which Bora works. JD MOWERY, President of the CDMO Division of Bora Pharmaceuticals, explains how the group shares best practices on its sites and provides for its recent strategic acquisition in Baltimore, which was to become the flagship installation of Bora for the filling services.
JD MOWERY: Bora Pharmaceuticals is a global CDMO. We provide development and manufacturing services to the pharmaceutical industry. We have 10 sites worldwide, around 2,500 employees, we distribute more than 100 markets.
We produce a small molecule, a large molecule; We make filling ends, all kinds of dose forms.
Our mission is to really improve lives in the world – we want to be a biotechnology and pharmacy partner, to make sure that as many patients as possible is treated. And when we think of sustainability, it is both an ethical obligation, but it is also an expectation of the industry.
While we are working with more and more pharmaceutical companies, their expectations is that we are a good steward of the resources we have, and we really take great care of the environments in which we work.
JD MOWERY: Sustainability is important for Bora Pharmaceuticals for many reasons, one of which is, you know, our board of directors has made sure that it is something on which we remain focused on the point of view of governance. We want to make sure that we do our best to take advantage of our resources, because it is an ethical obligation, but also because it is a right to function for our pharmaceutical companies with which we work.
We see more and more in the industry which, you know, some of the major pharmaceutical companies, it is an expectation. When they are looking for companies with which to associate, they expect that we prioritize sustainability as much as they do.
Our site in Mississauga is probably the most mature site, from the point of view of sustainability. They are probably the most robust program we have, and they are in a way the model in sustainability.
Mississauga aims to become SDTI certified in 2025. And then when we think of the APAC region, Zhunan has increased capacity, but they were also able to reduce their thermal oxidation by 38%. So, obviously quite impressive to have these high types of objectives from the point of view of sustainability.
The Baltimore site is part of the Bora family here in August 2024. It was previously an emerging site that we have acquired; We brought it to the Bora network to serve as a filling site for sterile manufacturing for large molecules as well as the small molecule.
It was a strategic game to allow us to start maintaining our customers for a longer part of the value chain. So, a customer for which we previously manufacture a drug substance for the side of the large molecule, we will actually be able to help them go to the stage of the drug product.
The sustainability team is there to visit the Baltimore site, and one of the things we want to understand is: where are we today, from the point of view of shows? We arrive on the occasion of a year, they will therefore be there to collect a few samples and understand where it is for and what opportunities we must continue to improve the site.
The next months and years for the site are very exciting. The FlexPro line which was invested by the previous owners, emerging, is a high -speed insulator line that we will bring online in the next two weeks.
The Board of Directors recently approved an AST and fully automated insulator line which will make bottles, syringes and cartridges, so that construction will be in progress by July, and it will be online by the end of the year. This will allow us to manufacture clinical commercial products as well as orphans and on a small scale.
And then obviously, we have an current commercial offer for nearly 20 customers. So there will be a lot of things here on the Baltimore site. Continuing to train people, continuing to improve the capabilities of the site. But these are exciting moments here in the establishment.
We really believe that this site can be one of the flagship installations of the Bora network. It is sort of our first in -depth in the filling. We know that we will need an additional capacity elsewhere in North America, probably in Europe, as well as in the Apac region. But that will be what we use as a model site.
We are thinking of what we are doing this year – by bringing the FlexPro line, the installation of the AST insulator line – it encourages this installation to really take what we do at the upper level.
We will be able to meet the needs of our customers for the years to come. But we also understand that over the next two years, we will probably have to install a high speed line, greater than 100-150 bottles per minute. We also know that from a capacity point of view, many of our customers provide units per year that we would also need to grow. We should therefore have this in mind, whether it is the expansion of this installation, maximum the imprint of this installation.
We will therefore continue to learn and maximize our opportunities and efficiency here. But we know it’s a bit, what Bora may be. And this site will be this model for us and for our customers, to show what are Bora’s abilities to continue serving and really treat customers differently from what they have seen elsewhere in the CDMO industry.