This month sees the launch of Saltigo as a wholly owned subsidiary of Lanxess, providing global services for custom synthesis and manufacturing.
"We have already taken important steps prior to launching Saltigo to ensure not just a competitive edge but also market success from the outset," said Dr Axel Westerhaus, currently head of the fine chemicals business unit and designated managing director of Saltigo. These measures have included trimming the new subsidiary to around 1,400 employees from the 1,900 currently employed at Fine Chemicals.
Significant investment has been made in preparation for the launch, including extensive reorganisation and modernisation of the company's production facilities for small volumes at the Leverkusen site, along with a Euro 1.5m investment in merging the small-volume capabilities from various facilities into two completely modernised buildings.
A new operating unit, named "Plant 5", will incorporate four different core areas of expertise for the small volume business, including a high-pressure laboratory, custom manufacturing on a scale of 10-100kg, batch piloting and mini-plants for scaling up continuous reactions.
There are also activities that have just started or are still at the planning stage, such as expansion of the deep-freeze capacities for production at Leverkusen. At a cost of around €500,000, the ZeTO (Central Organics Pilot Plant) is currently being equipped to perform reactions on a production scale at temperatures down to -120°C. Work has begun on the construction of a self-sufficient mobile package unit with an integrated heater for controlling reactor temperature in the range of -120 °C to +120 °C and is scheduled for completion by mid-2006.
Expansion of the GMP capacities is currently being considered, with a decision likely in the next few months: "The GMP market offers great potential for us to increase our pharmaceuticals business in the long term," Westerhaus explained.
A parallel reactor has been commissioned that was developed specifically for processes involving phosgene. KASPAR (catalyst screening of phosgene reactions with automated reactor systems) can perform up to six simultaneous reactions fully automatically, and is expected to result in a six-fold decrease in the time spent on experiments in the screening process at the start of a new project.
Saltigo is also expanding its range of services in the field of fluoro-organic chemistry, especially in r&d. The portfolio offered by the "fluorine team" includes custom research, syntheses of non-commercial fluorine organic compounds anddirect access to more than 4,000 fluorine compounds.
