Primary source Hovione: Hovione Completes €40 Million Expansion of Loures Tablet Manufacturing Center Adding Commercial-Scale Batch Tableting Capacity
Primary source Hovione: Hovione Opens New Facility at New Jersey Campus, Doubling U.S. Spray Drying Capacity
Scope note: this is small-molecule (chemical) pharmaceutical manufacturing (spray drying and tableting), not bioprocessing. We cover it in the Southern Europe Radar because Hovione's main global campus is in Loures, Portugal.
In two releases a month apart, the CDMO Hovione completed a tableting expansion at its main campus in Loures, Portugal (25 August 2026) and opened a new spray-drying building in East Windsor, New Jersey (16 September 2026). Both concern amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs) made by spray drying; in Loures, Hovione also compresses them into tablets at the same site.
Loures: a mirrored batch tableting line
- Investment: the expansion completes an investment cycle of more than EUR 40 million.
- Capacity: 25% more commercial-scale batch tableting capacity. The release also describes a 25% increase in the centre's manufacturing area.
- Design: a second line that mirrors the original across dispensing, blending, dry granulation, tableting and film coating, at the 300 to 400 kg batch scale, plus in-process control and staging areas.
- People: 50 new jobs at the Sete Casas facility, which employs about 1,250 people.
In 2022, Hovione invested in a continuous tablet manufacturing line at the same complex.
East Windsor: US spray-drying capacity doubled
The new 89 Twin Rivers building (31,000 sq ft, about 2,900 m2) adds two GMP-ready, commercial-scale PSD-3 spray dryers and, according to Hovione, doubles its US spray-drying capacity. It operates under the campus's existing FDA registration and completes a USD 100 million investment cycle in New Jersey. Hovione plans to develop about 15 acres of adjacent land into a 125,000 sq ft (about 11,600 m2) manufacturing facility over the next five to ten years, and offers customers the option to co-invest for priority access.
What it means for a plant
The Loures design choice is the transferable lesson: a mirrored line gives redundancy and like-for-like transfers between lines, which Hovione says reduces the process risk of moving from development to commercial supply. Pairing spray drying and tableting at one site, under one quality system, removes the transfer of intermediates between sites or suppliers. Biologics plants face the same trade-off when they choose between identical trains and a mix of scales.
