The latest addition to the burgeoning Indian life sciences sector is the announcement by Reliance Life Sciences that it is to digitally automate the country’s largest life sciences plant.
Emerson Process Management has won this major contract and is to supply PlantWeb digital automation architecture and solution services to Reliance's new biopharmaceutical manufacturing facility.
Reliance Life Sciences is a member of the Reliance Group of Companies, India’s largest private sector enterprise with group revenues of US$20b.
The new facility will use microbial and mammalian cell culture process to manufacture therapeutic proteins. Reliance's current therapeutic proteins initiative focuses on the development of natural and recombinant proteins, humanised monoclonal antibodies, novel protein therapies and gene therapy protocols. The company already operates a pilot facility at Mumbai for the manufacture of blood plasma proteins such as albumin, immunoglobulin, thrombin and fibrinogen.
Antigen discovery programme
Meanwhile its recombinant therapeutic proteins group is also working at the Mumbai pilot plant. Here, the antigen discovery programme is aimed at identifying novel proteins and targets, which is useful in diagnostics and therapy. Genomics, proteomics, microarrays, SAGE and SEREX technologies are employed to identify and develop novel protein-based therapies. The company is also building a large current good manufacturing practice (cGMP) manufacturing facility for recombinant therapeutic proteins in Navi Mumbai, which would also have provision for contract manufacturing.
The new facility is the largest automation project to date in the life sciences industry in India. Reliance Life Sciences officials selected Emerson for its reputation and experience in the field of life sciences
Emerson will provide engineering design, digital automation, process management, validation, and commissioning for the project.
The company will install its PlantWeb digital plant architecture, which has an extensive track record of lowering installation costs, ensuring a fast startup, and improving ongoing plant operations and maintenance.
Emerson’s PlantWeb digital plant architecture will use FOUNDATION fieldbus communications technology to connect the company’s DeltaV digital automation system and AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager to smart field devices. According to Emerson, the resulting network of digital intelligence will extend throughout Reliance Life Sciences’ new plant, enabling project savings and operational excellence.
Intelligent field devices from Emerson will include Rosemount pressure, temperature, level and flow transmitters, as well as Rosemount Analytical pH and dissolved oxygen sensors and transmitters, Micro Motion Coriolis flow and density meters, and Brooks flowmeters.
Reliance has adopted a fast track OEM construction approach for life sciences plants, and has chosen Emerson as a main supplier for the initiative. Supporting the OEM approach, Emerson will design and project manage skid vendors as they build modular skids. Emerson will employ its modular automation approach that enables fast start-up by quickly linking skids for effective communications when installed. The fast and effective skid link-up results from building skids using the company’s intelligent digital technology, including PlantWeb architecture with FOUNDATION fieldbus communications and the DeltaV system.
The OEM approach adopted by Reliance has been to create standard plant modules, complete with documents and drawings, based on known pre-tested process cells. These are produced in parallel, and then all skids are integrated at the site to ensure automation consistency across the manufacturing floor, and provide a consolidated validation according to cGMP procedures.
“We are happy to be associated with Emerson Process Management since it has proven capabilities in managing advanced digital automation architectures with cGMP norms,” said K V Subramaniam, head of Reliance Life Sciences.
“Reliance’s new plant is the first fully automated life sciences plant in India,” said Pradipta Sen, president of Emerson India. “We are pleased that Emerson's advanced PlantWeb technology will be a part of this groundbreaking project, which would advance the modernisation and growth of the life sciences sector in India,” he added.
The lure of India
India is the world’s largest pharmaceutical producer by volume and the thirteenth largest by value. A recent meeting of the World Economic Forum heard that the country offers pharmaceutical manufacturers significant cost advantages.
According to Ajay G Piramal, chairman of Nicholas Piramal India, the government should be doing more to exploit this competitive advantage. He told the Forum: “The drug discovery process costs 10 per cent of what it does in the West.
“We can discover and produce a drug for one-tenth or one-fifth what it would take to develop a drug in the US and Europe and meet the needs of the five billion people in the world who cannot afford the latest medicines,” he added.
The success of the IT sector in India has demonstrated the benefits of innovation, Harish Narula, President, Lupin, India, told the Forum. In the pharmaceutical sector, there are R&D centres that are approved by the FDA, a crucial quality standard.
“The government is fully conscious that after the success of IT the next step is the health industry,” he said.
Meanwhile Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, chairman and md of Biocon India, highlighted drug development as a key opportunity. Indian companies, Mazumdar-Shaw noted, are very good at process innovation, but must improve their drug development capabilities.
There is a global need for affordable drug development, she remarked. While India's cost advantages are its key attraction, ‘this is the role India would want to play”. Clinical development of pharmaceuticals – the trials of new drugs – is a major opportunity, thanks to India’s large and diverse population. Biotech and pharmaceutical companies in India should aim to meet the outsourcing needs of large global firms, she concluded.
