This week, SpeakPharma interviews Pere Mañé, Chief Executive Officer of Madrid-headquartered Suanfarma, which provides active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) to its 400-odd customers spread across more than 70 countries. Suanfarma’s customized solutions rely on the company’s sharp focus on innovation and sustainability, and a robust global network of 10 strategically located offices. As a CDMO, Suanfarma provides end-to-end solutions for the development and commercialization of intermediates and small-molecule drug substances. In this interview, Mañé talks about Suanfarma’s customer-centric focus, its manufacturing capabilities, strengths, and how it plans to leverage artificial intelligence to elevate industrial performance, reinforce quality, and accelerate commercial effectiveness.Given its global footprint, how is Suanfarma able to strike a balance between maintaining consistent quality, remaining customer-centric, and supporting diverse regulatory and development requirements across markets?At Suanfarma, we apply one global quality standard across all our sites, supported by our strong local regulatory and technical expertise. This allows us to meet the stringent regulatory requirements of regulators like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), European Medicines Agency (EMA) and others while staying closely aligned with our customers’ needs. By working collaboratively from the start of each project, we deliver consistent quality, tailored regulatory support, and a truly customer‑centric partnership worldwide.In markets where supply reliability is critical, how does Suanfarma leverage its multi-site manufacturing network, operational flexibility, and logistics capabilities?Suanfarma leverages its multi-site manufacturing network to mitigate risk and ensure continuity of supply. Our operational flexibility allows us to rapidly reallocate capacity, adjust production plans, and respond proactively to demand fluctuations or unforeseen disruptions. This flexibility is supported by robust logistics capabilities, efficient coordination across sites, and reliable delivery performance.From a risk analysis perspective, we prioritize actions that are fully aligned with our strategic goals: strengthening compliance, securing delivery commitments, and building long-term trust with our customers. We are actively streamlining processes and standardizing operations across the network to enhance agility, improve responsiveness, and reduce complexity.By building the foundations of a resilient and compliant platform, Suanfarma ensures not just supply continuity, but also a reliable partnership that supports our customers’ growth in an increasingly volatile market.How does Suanfarma’s TT&GO framework help overcome critical API development and technology-transfer challenges? And what makes it a differentiating element of your CDMO model? Suanfarma’s TT&GO framework addresses critical API development and technology-transfer challenges by transforming tech transfer from a high-risk, reactive step into a structured, risk-based, and predictable process. Integrated into the CDMO project management model, it ensures early and effective knowledge transfer from R&D or external partners to GMP manufacturing, anticipating scale-up, quality, and complexity challenges typical of multi-step APIs and bioconversion processes.What differentiates TT&GO is that it goes beyond documentation. It combines Quality by Design principles, systematic gap and risk analysis, and operational industrial experience to proactively mitigate risks, protect timelines and investments, and accelerate industrialization. This makes TT&GO a core CDMO differentiator, enabling faster, more reliable, and de-risked API commercialization.Suanfarma focuses on continuous improvement of industrial processes to minimize environmental impact. Can you tell us more about the green initiatives Suanfarma has implemented and how they contribute to your overall sustainability strategy? Sustainability is embedded in the way Suanfarma operates. Across our industrial sites, we have implemented energy‑efficiency upgrades, solvent‑recovery installations, advanced wastewater treatment technologies, and circular reuse initiatives (packaging) that significantly cut our environmental footprint.These actions are part of a broader strategy focused on responsible resource management, and continuous improvement. Our goal is to ensure that every innovation not only enhances performance but also contributes to a more sustainable and resilient value chain for our customers, in line with our commitment to providing high quality APIs at affordable prices worldwide.In an increasingly digital and technology-driven industry, how is Suanfarma leveraging innovations in digital tools to stay ahead of the curve?We are modernizing our core systems — including financial reporting, purchasing processes, quality, and data management — to create a solid, secure, and efficient digital backbone, enabling end‑to‑end efficiency and ensuring compliance. This includes a comprehensive cybersecurity action plan, a future‑ready ERP strategy, and a solid infrastructure across all sites.Building on this foundation, we are also exploring and piloting AI as part of our strategic IT roadmap to enhance decision‑making and streamline operations. We are identifying use cases to apply advanced analytics and AI‑driven automation to elevate industrial performance, reinforce quality, and accelerate commercial effectiveness, including production planning, equipment performance, energy efficiency, deviation management, forecasting, sales effectiveness, and customer‑facing.To support this journey, we are evolving our IT team to build the skills and structure needed for the next wave of innovation.
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