Sheffield™ Pharma Ingredients Highlights Portfolio Strength At CPhI

The Sheffield Pharma Ingredients portfolio now includes one of the industry's safest, strongest Lactose excipient ranges, an innovative Tabletting System, Mastertaste Pharma flavours, Film Coating Systems, and a range ofEmulsifi NF-monographed Glyceride Emulsifiers.

At CPhI Worldwide 2008 (on Stand 51E39), Sheffield Pharma Ingredients will showcase not only the breadth and depth of its pharma product portfolio, but also its strong global regulatory and technical backup, plus rock-solid reputation for safety and quality. This innovative, holistic stance is increasingly differentiating the company as a forerunner in the new partnership-based business model that is emerging for manufacturers of APIs and excipients.

The Lactose Leader
Sheffield has been manufacturing pharma-grade Lactose products since 1940. It has the longest reputation for anhydrous direct tableting excipients, and holds the original patent for NF Anhydrous Direct Tableting (DT) lactose. Today it produces both monohydrate and anhydrous forms of lactose at a fully cGMP compliant FDA registered drug establishment in the US. It uses a certified rennet-free whey source to eliminate any possible TSE contamination concerns.

A key recent innovation has been the creation of a high-flowing ‘DTHV' NF lactose grade, which forms harder tablets at lower compaction forces than other high-flowing directly compressible products. At the same time DTHV tablets have similar disintegration profiles as other high flowing directly compressible lactose tablets with lower hardness values.

Additionally, since January 2007, Sheffield has been part of a global strategic sales and marketing agreement with Foremost Farms USA. Under this agreement Sheffield Pharma Ingredients will manage the sales, marketing and technical support of Foremost Farms USA's NF Grade Lactose products for pharmaceutical applications. By uniting two global market leaders, Sheffield in direct tableting and Foremost in wet granulation, this agreement brings together over 100 years of innovative lactose experience.

Tabletting System
Sheffield's Tabletting System concept provides a simple way to create custom fast-dissolving tablet formulations using a free-flowing lactose-based functional powder for direct compression. Customers only need to add the desired active and a flavour (or a taste-masked active), plus lubricant, and then form into tablets using standard direct compression techniques.

Pharma Flavours
Sheffield's recently launched range of Kerry Pharma Flavours, which now enjoys pharma levels of quality control, can improve the taste of pharmaceuticals by masking the unpleasant taste associated with many active pharmaceutical ingredients. Kerry's understanding of flavour perception, regional consumer preferences and extensive product knowledge permit the optimal choice of flavour profiles for every pharma application. 14 standard flavours are available, but in-house development capabilities permit the creation of custom flavours as required.

Coating Systems
Sheffield's Film Coating Systems provide an easy-to-use yet complete solution for tablet cosmetics and functionality. The range comprises four clear coating systems, a colour coating system and two choices of enteric coating system. All are supplied as a free-flowing powder that is readily dissolved in water to yield a ready-to-spray solution for aqueous film coating. Application substrates range from pharmaceutical tablets to nutritional supplements.

Glycerides
Sheffield's three NF pharma Glycerides, which benefit from a 60-year manufacturing pedigree, are suitable for a wide range of applications in oral and other dosage forms. A powdered glycerol monostearate is particularly valuable as a tabletting lubricant to replace magnesium stearate. Here it can help to achieve improved tablet hardness, lower ejection forces, faster disintegration and improved dissolution profiles, as well as manufacturing process benefits.

Evolving today for success tomorrow
Tim O'Reilly, Global Business Director of Excipients, comments: "We are transforming our company into a functional pharma ingredients producer completely capable of collaborating in drug delivery systems development with customers. Our customers now need to market drugs with increasing precision, addressing specialist treatment niches, establishing clear points of differentiation and taking much closer notice of end-user preference factors such as appearance, ease of consumption and novel convenience functionality.

"Accordingly our focus is now firmly upon in-house applications development capabilities, coupled with radical new approaches to Oral Solid Dosage Forms. This includes a revolutionary new fast disintegrating system that will mitigate problems with meeting compendial dissolution time issues..

For more information or to request an interview, please contact Kate Hessian at kate.hessian@collegehill.com

About Sheffield Pharma Ingredients
Sheffield Pharma Ingredients, as part of the international Kerry group, has been the leading manufacturer of excipients and media components for the pharmaceutical, biotech and fermentation industries for over 60 years. Its protein hydrolysates are manufactured using state-of-the-art manufacturing and automated control processes, while its lactose excipients are certified to meet all compendial requirements of the NF, EP and JP monographs.

Drawing upon worldwide resources and providing a global technical platform, Sheffield Pharma Ingredients provides unique, technology-driven solutions to meet any customer's need. With state-of-the-art applications and product development capabilities, Sheffield Pharma Ingredients is committed to the continuing development of consistent, high quality products backed by unparalleled service, technical support and formulation customization capabilities.

For more information, see www.sheffield-products.com. Corporate enquiries to Hans Huttinga, Strategic Marketing Director (Pharma Ingredients) at Kerry Bioscience - Sheffield Pharma Ingredients:. E-mail hans.huttinga@kerrybioscience.com .

SOURCE: Sheffield Pharma Ingredients