Takeda Receives Top Honors in the Social Impact Category for the 2023 ISPE Facility of the Year Awards
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Takeda has announced that the firm won first place in the Social Impact category of the 2023 Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) from the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE). At its production facility for plasma-derived therapies in Lessines, Belgium, Takeda was commended for accelerating the transition to sustainable facility design, which aims to ensure the efficient use of energy, minimize waste, reduce carbon footprint, incorporate green manufacturing techniques, and reduce environmental impact.
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The Lessines facility has been converting human plasma into life-altering and life-sustaining medicines for more than 50 years. The site’s production lines include the award-winning facility. The cutting-edge facility, which started operating in August 2022, creates liquid purified human Alpha-1 Antitrypsin protein that is sterile, ready-to-use, and utilized to generate medications for persons with Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, a hereditary illness that can cause catastrophic lung and/or liver disease. The plant uses cutting-edge digital and environmentally friendly technologies to run.
“We are very proud to be recognized by ISPE in the FOYA Social Impact category. Our approach to manufacturing is driven by our unwavering commitment to address patient needs and sustainability.” said Thomas Wozniewski, global manufacturing and supply officer, at Takeda. “We constantly try to identify opportunities for improvement throughout our global manufacturing network, and drive initiatives that help achieve our ambitious environmental goals, such as reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in our operations before 2035, reducing fresh water consumption and waste and developing more sustainable products.”
In Lessines, Takeda employs more than 1,200 people from 23 different nationalities who are committed to providing products to more than 300,000 patients annually in 80 different countries. Patients with uncommon diseases and other unique circumstances are the target audience for the website. It is a center of excellence for the purification of immunoglobulins, with the ability to fill and package medicines made from plasma as well as hematological products.
“Our Lessines manufacturing site is one of the most advanced sites with regard to digitalization and the reduction of environmental impact of manufacturing operations,” said Gunter Baumgartner, global head of engineering, at Takeda. “The site was the first in the global Takeda manufacturing network to pioneer a rain and waste water treatment system enabling the awarded facility to reduce its freshwater consumption by 60 percent or save 36 million liters of freshwater annually. Our team at Lessines made environmental innovation part of their mission and the award honors every site employee for their contribution.”
The Lessines production facility plays a significant role in Takeda’s global manufacturing network. The facility creates medicines through energy- and water-intensive manufacturing processes. The design and energy efficiency are therefore given considerable consideration in order to optimize those processes.
The 4,2 GWh of power consumed annually, which is entirely produced on-site and reduces CO2 emissions by 861 tons, is entirely covered by renewable energy. The entire site’s heating and electrical requirements will be met by solar panels, biogas, and soon geothermal energy and wind turbines as well. The honored facility also has a smart Building Management System (BMS) that aids in energy efficiency. Seventy on-site electric car charging stations are fueled by the electricity produced by the solar panels.
Process optimization, staff assistance, and environmental impact reduction all depend on digitalization. The facility is completely paperless and uses Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to gather all relevant data. All processes have been digitized and are available via QR codes. Through virtual tours created with 3D scanning, all manufacturing regions are accessible from a distance for research or site visits. There are training programs that simulate aseptic procedures in a secure, stress-free virtual setting. The facility uses augmented reality extensively, which significantly lowers human error rates and promotes the “right first time” mentality at the location.
About the ISPE Facility of the Year Awards Program
The Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA), which were established in 2004, honor cutting-edge initiatives that make use of the latest technologies to enhance product quality, lower the cost of manufacturing high-quality pharmaceuticals, and show improvements in project delivery. The FOYA program gives the pharmaceutical science and manufacturing sector a stage on which to highlight its successes in facility design, construction, and operation while also disseminating the creation of novel technological applications and cutting-edge methodologies.
About Takeda
With its headquarters in Japan, Takeda is a leading worldwide biopharmaceutical company committed to discovering and delivering medications that may change people’s lives. They are driven in everything they do by their values for patients, their people, and the environment. Oncology, Rare Genetics and Hematology, Neuroscience, and Gastroenterology (GI), with expertise in immunological and inflammatory illnesses, are the four therapeutic areas on which Takeda concentrates its R&D efforts. Additionally, they invest strategically in R&D for vaccines and plasma-derived therapies. By advancing the field of novel treatments and utilizing our improved collaborative R&D engine and skills to build a strong, modality-diverse pipeline, they are concentrating on producing highly innovative medicines that help improve people’s lives.
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