Shilpa Medicare, a full-service contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO), launched its new flow chemistry Center of Excellence (CoE) at CPHI Frankfurt. Based at the CDMO’s Bangalore site, the center unites cross-functional teams across R&D and manufacturing to accelerate process development, scale-up, and commercial production for continuous flow.

The new CoE is staffed by a team of more than 100 specialists and integrates Sravathi’s proprietary flow technologies with Sravathi’s advanced continuous reactor platforms, enabling the development and commercialization of an expanded range of reactions including fluorination, bromination, nitration, chlorination, oxidation, and Grignard reactions.

In terms of reactors the site features more than 50 patented, custom-designed micro and pilot flow reactors, with lab, bench, and pilot scales ranging from 30 mL/min to 200 mL/min. These systems handle multi-phase, catalytic, and gas–liquid reactions under corrosion-resistant materials of construction, ensuring safety and reliability across highly exothermic or hazardous chemistries. Continuous downstream operations, such as crystallization, extraction, and thin-film evaporation, allow fully integrated end-to-end processing. Designed at Sravathi, the reactors have shown consistent and reliable scale-up from laboratory to commercial operations for processes involving gas–liquid and liquid–liquid reactions. By integrating scalability considerations into the design, the time-to-market and risks commonly associated with scale-up have been notably reduced.

The center includes automated processes for temperature and pressure measurements, meaning monitoring and adjustments can be done remotely. This high degree of digitalization ensures reproducibility and scalability while minimizing human intervention during flow operation.

The Flow Chemistry Center of Excellence is now fully operational and open to client collaborations, with services spanning process development, technology transfer, and commercial manufacturing.