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Business View Magazine
Hovione LLC
In it for life
Hovione is an international developer and manufacturer
of APIs (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) for its custom-
ers in the healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors who
are planning to bring new and off-patent drugs to market.
The company was founded in Portugal, in 1959, by three
Hungarian émigrés Ivan Villax, Nicholas de Horthy, and An-
drew Onody; the first two letters of whose last names form
the name of the company.
Today, Hovione has 1,200 employees worldwide in eight
locations. Its two main research and development sites
are in Loures, Portugal and New Jersey, U.S.A.; its four
manufacturing plants are in Macau, Ireland, mainland
China, and Loures. It also has offices in Hong Kong, India,
and Switzerland.
Marco Gil is the General Manager of the New Jersey site,
which has 52 employees, including scientists, chemists,
and chemical and mechanical engineers – many of them
with advanced degrees from some of the nation’s most
prestigious universities. Hovione opened the New Jersey
site 2001, to be closer to its U.S. client base. “Many of our
customers were small bio-techs or mid size pharma com-
panies that were mainly based in the U.S.,” says Gil. “So
