As Published in the Diari De Tarragona, Sunday 18th June 2023

The global supply of Ventolin metered-dose inhaler actuators are manufactured in in L’Arboç (Baix Penedès), Tarragona. In the Parc Empresarial del Foix, H&T Presspart, a German owned company, manufactures components and devices for drug administration. H&T Presspart Tarragona is an important production center for the global pharmaceutical industry, with clients including Astra Zeneca and Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK), with exports around the globe.

With a combined annual production of more than 1,000 million units of injection-moulded plastic drug delivery components and devices, H&T Presspart has invested more than 20 million euros in its factory in L’Arboç in the last two years to expand its production capacity up to 3,000 square meters of cleanroom production facilities, with which to carry out new projects as they anticipate strong growth in the coming years.

This growth has lead to the site employing an extra 50 employees, bringing the current number of staff to over 200 employees. As well as the new employees, the site has undergone an important process of digital transformation that has led them to be recognized by the Tarragona Chamber of Commerce with the Premi a la Digitalització i Innovació in the last edition of the Premis a l’Excel lència Empresarial, positioning this company as a reference model in digitization for the Chamber of Commerce.

Industry 4.0 is one of the pillars in the growth of H&T Presspart Tarragona, which last year had a turnover of more than 45 million euros. This year 2023, if everything goes according to expectations, it could exceed 50 million euros in turnover.

Data to help make decisions

Thomas Portune, Chairman and General Manager of H&T Presspart Tarragona, explains that “we are a paperless company, which is automating all processes with digitization: we use data to make decisions, and this data comes from our processes”.

“We have -continues Thomas Portune- digitized all Human Resource processes, and all of our manufacturing machines, so know the status of any piece of equipment via sensors, connecting with a system that gives us all the production data and with which we can have traceability of an manufacturing batch”.

“Predictive maintenance and automated requests for spare parts, with a real-time analysis of the performance of each of these pieces of equipment (where there are close to fifty plastic injection moulding machines) are some of the applications of this process of capturing and utilization of data, to focus the company’s employees on “the value-added work,” explains Thomas Portune.

Product development

H&T Presspart Tarragona’s product development department adds further value to its customers. From here H&T Presspart Tarragona carries out its R&D with additional R&D centers in Marsberg (Germany), Blackburn (UK) and Nidau ​​(Switzerland).

At H&T Presspart Tarragona they are not limited to being a supplier of standard components and devices. The company also designs and develops drug delivery device prototypes for their clients’, in processes that usually last between five and seven years, in line with the times that the pharmaceutical industry manages.

“These pharmaceutical companies -explains Thomas Portune-, once they have the medicine, they look for the best form of application and industrialization. What we do is give them a service for the development of this product, making prototypes until their commercial validation, to then proceed to their manufacture”.

More hires

The prospects, after the significant growth in recent years, are to continue on this upward path, which has led H&T Presspart Tarragona to consider expanding its factory in the next two or three years, with an investment similar to which it has already carried out in its latest expansion (more than 20 million euros), to double (if the projects in which they are involved evolve as planned) the manufacturing space allocated to its clients, reaching 6,500 square meters of clean room.

With some 10,000 square meters built today, of which 3,000 square meters are a clean room (a preserved space that meets the regulatory and quality standards required by the pharmaceutical industry), if these new investments come to fruition (doubling its production capacity in a clean room), then there would be “a significant expansion of the workforce”, according to Thomas Portune.

Among the new employees that this company will need to incorporate in the coming years are mechanical engineers and electrical engineers, but also new professionals linked to Artificial Intelligence, a path that they are already exploring for improvement of their processes. “We have very sophisticated and attractive projects in the world of the pharmaceutical industry, in product design and Industry 4.0”, comments Thomas Portune, who is confident that they will be able to attract this talent.

The international dimension of this company, for its part, also plays a role in its ability to offer long-term professional careers. Today, H&T Presspart Tarragona exports to 36 countries, with 80% of its turnover in exports, although the remaining 20% ​​that is sold to Spanish customers local also ends up, to a large extent in global markets.