Pharma Capsules

Accreditation

Amerilab Achieves GMP Registration

Amerilab Technologies (Plymouth, MN) achieved Good Manufacturing Practices Registration through NSF International's Dietary Supplement Certification program.

Amerilab Technologies specializes in the development, manufacture, and packaging of effervescent tablets and powders. With extensive experience in formulation of various pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, nutraceuticals, and other specialty applications, Amerilab Technologies is a leader in effervescent dosage forms.

Collaboration

Walker Barrier to Produce Booths for Extract Technology

Walker Barrier Systems (New Lisbon, WI) will manufacture Extract Technology (Huddersfield, UK) downflow booths and products for the North American and Puerto Rican markets at its recently expanded New Lisbon facility.

Walker produces high-quality stainless steel isolators for containment and aseptic applications. Customers will continue to receive technical support from the Extract team in the US.

Expansions

Catalent Expands Bioreactor Capacity

Catalent Pharma Solutions (Somerset, NJ) will add a 1000-L bioreactor train in its Middleton, Wisconsin, facility by 2009. The expansion will more than double Catalent's bioreactor capacity. The expansion will meet increased demand for production to support clinical trials in Asia, Australia, Europe, and the United States.

Catalent supplied two biotechnology companies with proteins produced with its proprietary "GPEx" technology. The technology is designed to aid the development of new biopharmaceuticals in a compliant, timely and cost-effective manner. The GPEx system produces stable, high-yielding mammalian cell lines for protein production quickly and efficiently.

HollisterStier Completes Small-Volume Parenterals Line

HollisterStier Laboratories (Spokane, WA) added a small-volume parenterals (SVP) line to its 172,000-ft² state-of-the-art facility. The new line aseptically fills 2–200-mL vials with liquid and lyophilized pharmaceutical products in batch sizes of 20–3000 L.

The 25,500-ft² vial-filling complex includes a vial filler equipped with a nondestructive automatic check-weigh system, and diaphragm filling pumps. The line offers compounding options such as aseptic compounding, portable compounding vessels, and large fixed compounding tanks. The vial inspection and packaging area includes inspection, labeling, ink-jet coding and secondary packaging.

Encap Adds New Facilities

After moving to a new location, Encap Drug Delivery (Livingston, UK), in partnership with Thermal Transfer (Derbyshire, UK), completed the first phase of its new expansion by opening a major new 200-m² laboratory suite dedicated to formulation, production, and analytical development.

The second phase of Encap's expansion, a 450-m² manufacturing facility is scheduled for completion in July 2008. This new facility will include two separate suites for large-scale pharmaceutical processing. One suite will be dedicated to the manufacture of products requiring special handling (e.g., high-potency and anticancer products).

Websites

Good Products Launches New Web Portal

Good Products (Nottingham, UK), a leading provider of enterprise content management solutions for the pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical industries, launched a new website: www.goodproductsUS.com. The site contains information about the company's electronic document management solutions (eDMS) and is designed to help customers successfully comply with the strict regulations governing electronic documents in the pharmaceutical environment.

Website users can view information on current and new products and access demonstrations of "g-docs," the company's proprietary eDMS, and "Co-Sign" digital-signature software. A virtual module of the "g-train" learning-management solution is also available.

Cortegra Debuts New Website

Cortegra Group (Parsippany, NJ), a leading provider of packaging solutions for the pharmaceutical and related industries, launched its new website: www.cortegra.com. The website features user-friendly navigation tools, and in-depth information about the company's products and services.

Products described on the website include anticounterfeiting solutions, ePedigree solutions, labels, flexible-packaging printing, folding cartons, inserts, and outserts.

Cognex Names Executive Vice-President

Cognex (Natick, MA) promoted Justin Testa to executive vice-president. Testa reports to Robert J. Shillman, the company's president.

In 2007, Testa became group business manager of the company's modular vision systems division (MVSD). In that role, Testa assumed senior-management and strategic-planning responsibility for all four of the business units within MVSD. Testa has also served as business-unit manager of Cognex's identification products group and vice-president of marketing. Testa joined Cognex as a sales engineer in 1983.