Contract Services

Lonza opens R&D centre in South America

Lonza has opened a research and development center in Salto, Uruguay. The Salto Technology Center (STC) will provide customized services in its six business areas: biosciences, consumer health and nutrition, hygiene, coatings and composites, agro ingredients, and water treatment.

With 1,600 square meters of area, the STC has 13 research laboratories and offers technical services and product applications. With its laboratories, training/meeting rooms and support facilities, the laboratory complex is planned to serve as a centre of excellence to share technologies, ingredients, diagnostic systems, and knowledge used in these different business units.

Lonza’s STC has infrastructure and equipment as well as a multidisciplinary team of researchers, including chemists, biologists, microbiologists, pharmacists, and agronomists who are in partnership with universities and other national and international research centers.

The initial investment in the STC was BRL 8 million ($2.4 million), according to Lonza’s technology manager responsible for the project, Mauricio Franzim.

One of the STC’s laboratories focuses on microbiology, so it was designed and equipped for the manipulation of fungi, bacteria, and algae. In conjunction with a laboratory of analytical chemistry, the analyses performed there will include gas chromatography, high-performance liquid chromatography, atomic absorption spectrometry, ultra violet spectrometry, and a genetic sequencing platform.

The genetic sequencing platform, linked to analytical laboratories and applications, is one of the services that Lonza offers to diagnose the root cause of microbiological contamination problems and allows monitoring from the manufacturing plant to the consumer market.