Environmental

 

Eastbound is committed to operate our development and manufacturing processes in a safe and environmentally secure manner. Many of the standards we use come from our own experiences in western pharmaceutical companies.

The Eastbound Process Development Center considers many factors in the development of robust manufacturing processes for our clients’ compounds. One important factor is the environmental burden of the process. ESI conducts a review of the environmental impact of every process developed and designs steps to mitigate any issues that are identified. Eastbound avoids the usage of any ozone depleting reagent or any solvent of ICH Class 1 toxicity. Often troublesome reagents or excessively dilute solvents will be adjusted or changed to reduce the effluent impact of the process. When a process is transferred to manufacturing, the same analysis is repeated to insure a robust process can be implemented and sustained as scale-up occurs.

Eastbound has invested in environmental systems to ensure compliance with local government and western standards of operation. A waste water treatment plant is operated at Dafeng that reduces effluent COD level to less than 500 ppm before it is discharged to the local wastewater facility which has capacity to treat 20 metric tons per day of wasterwater. All off-gasses from the chemical processes are collected and processed through acid/base scrubbers to remove most pollutants and then filtered through carbon absorption columns to remove the remainder. Recovered pollutants and solid waste are incinerated.

The Dafeng Eastbound facility is routinely inspected by the local environmental team to ensure compliance. The Chinese agency responsible for Environmental Protection has inspected and approved the plant. Three major western pharmaceutical clients have also inspected the facility against their own strict standards and approved of its systems and procedures to permit manufacturing for them. Each inspection is taken as an opportunity to not only demonstrate compliance but also to identify opportunities for improvement which are incorporated into our portfolio of environmental operations.