Following the Covid crisis, recent tensions over supplies of paracetamol, an active ingredient essential to public health, have led the French government to ask pharmaceutical manufacturers to relocate part of their production to France. With the support of the 2030 France program, Seqens, in partnership with Sanofi and UPSA, has developed a new process to build a paracetamol production unit with a low environmental footprint at its Roussillon site.

Mobilizing its R&D teams, Seqens announced that it had designed a competitive, environmentally-friendly facility. Thanks to the implementation of this new synthesis process, the plant’s environmental footprint will be reduced by a factor of 5 to 10 compared with existing units (reduction in waste, energy consumption, CO2 scopes 1 and 2 emissions, etc.).

Artelia is now actively involved in the implementation of this innovative production unit. One of the challenges of the project was to integrate all the equipment and technical batches for the manufacturing, controlled-atmosphere packaging and storage/shipping of the finished product into the limited space available in the new buildings. Drawing on the Group’s range of skills, Artelia is mobilizing more than 50 employees to cover all the project’s needs in-house (engineering, purchasing, construction management, qualification, etc.). In addition to the active ingredient production unit, our teams are involved in the extension of existing buildings (offices, laboratories, control room, changing rooms and raw material warehouse).

Photo credits: SEQENS