Business View Magazine | December 2020

140 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE DECEMBER 2020 business still thrives out of Site A in Montreal.” BVM: How has COVID-19 impacted your business? O’Rourke: “One of our target markets for the last few years has been in the biotech, biopharma, and injectable sectors and we’ve been supplying a number of world leaders in vaccines for more than 10 years. We were approached by one large German vaccine developer at the start of COVID; they asked at our Irish facility if we would get involved in the manufacture of three new raw materials required for the manufacture of the vaccine. It was all hands on deck and our Canadian facility staff and our Irish facility worked in tandem, nights and weekends, to meet the aggressive deadlines. Thankfully, we were able to do so, which allowed that vaccine to move forward into human clinical trials. It is now in Phase III and showing positive results. We’ve also worked on a couple smaller CSR projects, where we provided raw materials for ingredients in hand sanitizers, and we actually manufactured hand sanitizer out of Europe, as well, BVM: What do your operations entail? O’Rourke: “We have two manufacturing plants in the Greater Montreal region – Site A in Montreal that has been in operation over 50 years, and Site B in Baie-D’Urfé that opened about four years ago. Our third facility is located in Limerick, Ireland and opened about two years ago. They are all ISO certified and Site A, our main facility, holds a Drug Establishment License for the manufacture of APIs, and an EXCiPACT certification for GMP and GDP. We also have 30 customer audits at the facility, and we are FDA and Health Canada audited, as well. “The Irish facility is predominately set up for the manufacture of buffers, process solutions and chemical blends for the pharmaceutical industry. We’ve recently worked on a number of projects related to COVID-19. Site A in Canada is APIs and excipients, and Site B is predominately all excipients, and a number of raw materials. We also have some legacy business which is specialty chemicals – that division was set up 50 years ago and the