sponsoredFette Compacting Takes the Next Step Technology Partner For The Pharmaceutical Industry

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Fette Compacting GmbH

Fette Compacting is positioning itself as a process and development partner. CEO Joachim Dittrich and Dr. Marten Klukkert, Vice President Customer Development Center, reveal how the market leader is helping to shape change in the pharmaceutical sector, the role played by collaboration with pharmaceutical and nutrition customers, and the significance of innovations.

The tranquil town of Schwarzenbek refers to itself as “Stadt der Mitte” (town in the center) in reference to its location in the southern section of the Duchy of Lauenburg. Just how applicable this is can be decided individually by those arriving there at the railway station and making their way on foot to the industrial area on Grabauer Strasse, which is lined with green meadows. It soon becomes apparent, however, that this rural idyll is deceptive.

A few steps away, there is a highly vibrant company that has definitely long arrived in the center of the pharmaceutical but also the nutrition industry, and has embarked on an exciting journey into the future. Fette Compacting is one of those pharmaceutical companies that have “made it.”

Equipment that includes a “Fette Compacting press” is simply a must in the area of pharmaceutical production and the list of customers reads a like veritable “Who’s Who” of the industry. More than 5000 machines installed worldwide make the company a world market leader in its segment: the development and construction of tablet presses for the past 75 years.

In 1948, the company chronicle records the construction of the first tablet press going by the resonant name of “Hanseaten Perfecta,” which visually has nothing whatsoever to do with the glossy machines in the typical Fette Compacting design, but expresses exactly what sets this company apart: the desire to build perfect machines for high-quality pharmaceuticals that improve the quality of life. The machine manufacturer has meanwhile collected an entire gallery of design awards, which impressively proves that good looks have a lot to do with function. The latest creation, the FE CPS Continuous Processing System, also won the German Design Award last year as “Winner Excellent Production Design/Industry.”

Full Focus On The Customer

The industry solution for continuous mixing, dosing and direct compression of raw materials into tablets is the latest from the innovation forge of the Fette Compacting developers and at the same time a living testimony of how the team around Group CEO Joachim Dittrich and Vice President Customer Development Center Dr. Marten Klukkert envisions the innovation process in the company in the future. “We focus on the customers and their needs and work in partnership and with foresight,” explains Dittrich. This is what many companies now want, and customer orientation is a buzzword that everyone likes to adorn themselves with.

But Fette Compacting is pursuing these goals with great consistency and has set in motion a process that is about corporate strategy on the one hand and a culture of values on the other, i.e., “making every employee aware of the fact that we are not just building a tablet press, but that what we are doing is about producing medicines that improve the life of each individual,” emphasizes the CEO. “Together for Quality of Life” is the motto with the aim of making employees aware of the meaning of their work and, for Dittrich, this is an important part of the corporate culture. In this way, the company also wants to increase its appeal as an attractive employer and thus work to counteract demographic change. For Joachim Dittrich, the call to Schwarzenbek is a return to his homeland, as he grew up only 20 kilometers from the company headquarters. Nevertheless, 2021 saw him entering a new world, as he had previously been at home in the mechanical engineering sector of the consumer business, an industry that is obliged to adapt quickly to the needs of the consumer and always know exactly what moves the end customer. This speed and focus on the customer is now also the benchmark for Fette Compacting.

Sights Firmly Set On The Goal

The winds of change have since been blowing through the company as a whole. Customer orientation and internationalization are on the CEO’s agenda, as are, of course, the perennial issues of digitalization and sustainability. “We want to remain the world’s leading provider of solutions for OSD production. That means we have to get even closer to the markets and our customers across the globe,” he explains. The pharmaceutical industry is facing a paradigm shift in many respects. Necessitated by the rapid rise in cell and gene therapies, production methods and markets requirements are changing toward more individuality and thus smaller batches.

“The pharmaceutical industry is currently undergoing a process of change which other areas of industry have already completed,” Dittrich claims. Experts are anticipating a dividing of the market. Individual therapies on the one hand, mass production of medications to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes drugs, painkillers or flu medication on the other. Produced by the millions, these medications and the fact that the majority of drugs approved by the FDA are OSDs, continue to fuel the production of solid formulations.

But here, too, pharmaceutical producers are facing increased pressure on costs, high regulatory costs, poor availability of raw materials and active ingredients, as well as the reorganization of supply chains. “We see that pharmaceutical companies are bundling their structures from production to sales more strongly in the respective sales markets and are pursuing a ‘local for local’ strategy. The pharmaceutical market is becoming altogether more diversified; not every manufacturer has the same requirements,” is how Dr. Marten Klukkert, Vice President Customer Development Center at Fette Compacting, analyses the situation.

He has been with Fette Compacting for eight years now and he spent four years at the University of Hamburg working on his doctorate on solid drug formulations and processing on tablet presses. In terms of technology, no one can fool this pharmacist in a hurry. For example, he played a leading role in the development of the FE CPS Continuous Processing System. And now he is also setting the strategic course: in fact, the customer orientation practiced in this project is to set a precedent worldwide.

Worldwide Centers For An International Presence

That is why the machine manufacturer follows the markets with its modern Competence Centers – there are currently five of them, in all strategically important regions of the world. And they all follow the same standards to ensure that customers receive the best possible FATs, application and product tests. “We listen to the customers, understand their needs, and work with them to develop new products and ways of collaboration,” Klukkert explains. Digitalization also plays a role here: connected knowledge about machine data, the flow properties of powders, and much more — in short, the entire Fette  Compacting expertise — benefit customers directly.

AI helps to make forecasts about machine downtimes or product behavior, thereby raising the potential to make pharmaceutical customers’ production even more efficient but also support them with service and predictive maintenance. And the actual innovation process is exciting in itself, clearly differing from the classic project approach. Klukkert emphasizes that it is very important to start the conversation as early as possible, and to do so in a way that is open to technology. Initially, the focus is on the challenge, expectations of the result, and what the technological path to it might look like.

Goodbye, Specifications

“We develop ideas together, regularly exchange information about which approaches lead to success, and which adjustments we can still make,” he explains. In contrast to project work based on specifications, this iterative process ultimately leads to a precise solution that the developers know both the customer and the market really want. One important aspect now involves lean production processes, says Klukkert, i.e., going directly from the metering and mixing process to tableting without granulation, for example. Fette Compacting serves this trend toward direct compression with the FE CPS, and Klukkert definitely has his sights set on the entire breadth of the pharmaceutical industry.

This is because in the next few years, the first continuously manufactured drugs will also enter the generics market and demand the availability of corresponding technologies. “We want the entire industry to be able to take the technological leap forward, not just Big Pharma, but also the mid-sized generic manufacturer who has less capital and manpower.” Continuous Direct Compression and ePAT embedded process analytical technology are a blueprint for how effective collaboration with the pharmaceutical customer can be when both partners pool their expertise. The result of this partnership is a simple, robust solution with great performance that is convincing in everyday operations – unlike some other solutions developed in the scientific environment. “We believe that the embedded process analytical technology ePAT is one of the decisive factors for our customers. It leads to more transparency as well as better process understanding and provides in-process security that the product is within specifications,” Klukkert explains.

This also reveals where he sees the most important task of Customer Development: in the analysis of “what drives our customers today and in the future” in order to align our own actions in a targeted manner. And these drivers can also vary widely within a single sector, depending on whether a manufacturer of generic products, a research company or a contract manufacturer is involved. For research-based companies, for example, the effort associated with developing active ingredients through to market launch of the finished drug is enormous, Klukkert explains.

And this is where the expertise availed of by experts at Fette Compacting represents real added value. They know how products and machines interact optimally within the overall process and can thus significantly accelerate time-to-market. The Competence Center teams also provides support in transferring know-how within individual production facilities in the scope of local-for-local strategies or to a contract manufacturer. “We facilitate transitions within sites or to the CDMO because we converge the threads and provide flexibility for the customer,” Klukkert emphasizes.

In general, the focus is on simple systems and technologies that are easy for operators to use and that can process as many different product and material characteristics as possible with few adjustments. In a nutshell: “We want to achieve as much as possible with one machine. A manufacturer of generics doesn’t set up a different tablet press for every customer.” For Klukkert, this means reducing complexity through the process, and continuous production is a very decisive success factor for him.

Key Driver: Sustainability

There is another topic which is close to the two managers’ hearts: sustainability. “We see how this aspect is increasingly important for our customers. That’s why we also set ourselves a high benchmark and anticipate what customers need both today and tomorrow,” Klukkert explains. It is understood that Fette Compacting already has Ecovadis certification and bears the Silver Seal. But the energy and raw material requirements of the equipment and systems used also play a much more important role for pharmaceutical producers today than they did five years ago.

“Our machines are an important influencing factor in the overall network of the process,” says Klukkert. That is why the CO₂ footprint of the company as a whole is subjected to a great deal of scrutiny in order to become more sustainable and leaner in its own manufacturing process, too. Sustainability is not the only aspect changing market requirements, adds CEO Dittrich. Society, too, demands companies that take their responsibility seriously. At Fette Compacting, we embrace this change to create good conditions for further growth and a better quality of life.

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