How a plant grows

A cutting edge production facility in Sofia.

Sofia, 2013. A new Sopharma AD era for innovation and production.

We are proud to cut the ribbon on our newly built manufacturing facility in Sofia. We have modernized every existing facility we inherited from the state with the privatization of the company. Building a brand new solid dosage forms facility from scratch was a great experience and achievement for us.

THE PLANT IN NUMBERS

• Investment – 75 million BGN
• Capacity – 4 billion tablets yearly in a two-shift mode
• 400 jobs, of which 80% are occupied by people with higher education
• Plant for solid dosage forms area – 22 000 м²
• Laboratory and administrative complex area – 5000  м²
• High-shelves warehouse with 4200 pallet places with an electronic systems for material management
• Air conditioning system processing around 200 000 м³ of air per hour and has 18 000 м² air pipelines. Provides a controlled working environment for the pharmaceutical production.
• The construction took 2.5 years with a full-time employment of 150 people and over 100 000 workday.
• The materials, equipment and services were contracted with over 200 Bulgarian and foreign suppliers.
• Over 120 km. of cables were used.

"For this project Sopharma received a certificate for first class investor and an award for Logistics and production building of 2013” 
Hristo Popov,
Deputy Manager Solid Dosage Forms Plant 

We are proud that our new plant will have a minimal environmental footprint. Perhaps the most important step in this direction is the repeated reduction of organic solvents used in the granulation process and filming. These organic solvents will be replaced with water ones in our new production process and thus the annual consumption of isopropanol will decrease by up to 20,000 kg and the consumption of the acetone by up to 9,200 kg. We might add also the fact that we have installed 8,000 m2 photovoltaic units which will ensure the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions by up to 900 tons per year. The air coming out of the processes first goes through HEPA filter and is then discharged into the environment.

“The big challenge was to procure, install, commission, validate and put into operation the manufacturing equipment consisting of 43 separate installations with more than 100 different machines within two and a half years. This is what the team of Sopharma finished successfully and is something I’m proud of in my professional career. Together with this big project we also executed an additional one with European co-financing for acquiring of part of the process equipment with the grant being just over 3.9 million BGN.

For this project Sopharma received a certificate for first class investor and an award for Logistics and production building of 2013”.  Hristo Popov, Deputy Manager Solid Dosage Forms Plant