Alfa Laval is launching its Food & Pharma Division, with planned investments in research and development over the next four years. The aim is to position the company as a strategic partner for the pharmaceutical industry, drawing on its established expertise in separation processes, heat transfer and fluid handling to help improve profitability, accessibility and competitiveness in the sector, while also promoting social responsibility and environmental sustainability.
“Ensuring the production of safe and accessible medicines is more important today than ever. At Alfa Laval, we are committed to innovating and supporting the pharmaceutical industry in overcoming limits in terms of speed and scalability,” says Sammy Hulpiau, President of Alfa Laval’s Food & Pharma Division.
The new structure has been designed to help industry operators address several challenges: on the one hand, optimizing the production of rapidly growing generic and biosimilar drugs; on the other, making the most of the period during which patented drugs benefit from favourable pricing. Added to this is the urgent need to optimize productivity, strengthen competitiveness, ensure regulatory compliance, mitigate risks and improve supply chain resilience.
In a context marked by fierce competition, unpredictable climate change and geopolitical turbulence, the pharmaceutical industry must constantly adapt to transformations affecting markets, supply chains, demographics, regulations and the environment.
“With cutting-edge technologies and the expertise needed to apply these solutions to pharmaceutical production, we enable our customers to continuously optimize their processes and improve TCO and ROI,” explains Doug Osman, Strategic Business Developer at Alfa Laval Pharma. “In addition, we have the capabilities and commitment required for collaborative development, enabling innovations to be rapidly transferred to industrial production.”
A key aspect for many sectors, particularly Food and Pharma, is water efficiency: “Pharmaceutical production uses significant water resources and is subject to increasingly stringent global regulations requiring the removal of pharmaceutical residues from wastewater. Alfa Laval, with its long-standing experience in the water sector, is able to support pharmaceutical industries in improving water reuse, ensuring water security and regulatory compliance,” says Eline Suijlen, Water Industry & Strategic Partnership Manager at Alfa Laval.
The Covid pandemic represented a turning point for the pharmaceutical industry and also for Alfa Laval, as it meant joining forces to achieve seemingly impossible results and developing new medicines in extremely short timeframes with the aim of saving lives.
“In this challenging context, we – like many others – were forced to adopt new methods to achieve results quickly. This changed our approach to single-use equipment, for example, and the way it can be used to drastically accelerate research and development, thanks to the inherent flexibility and rapid prototyping capabilities of single-use systems. Today we benefit from these experiences, which have made us a better organization, able to address new challenges linked to demographics, geopolitics and climate change,” says Doug Osman.
In 2024, the United Nations updated its demographic estimates, forecasting that the world population will exceed 10 billion by 2060, with the share of people over 65 expected to reach 20%, while the growth of the middle class will increase demand for new, accessible and specialized medicines. (UN, 2024)
For pharmaceutical companies, this brings numerous challenges that require reliability, agility and resilience. Doug Osman concludes: “We are fully aware of the challenges facing the sector. At Alfa Laval, we have the experience and expertise, and with the new structure of the Food & Pharma Division we are well equipped to support customers and successfully address these challenges.”