SONEAS Chemicals
Reliable Chemistry Partner To Pharmaceuticals

In its 24-year journey so far, the chemical services provider SONEAS Chemicals Ltd. has helped numerous pharma companies and biotech firms conducting early-stage product development and manufacturing, pre-clinical, or initial clinical activities optimise their product development cycle and improve speed to market. Primarily, the company develops Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (APIs) and intermediates to ensure clients’ development programs are catered to on time. What is more, SONEAS is renowned for its ability to manufacture APIs at the later stages of the clinical study.

The company brings to bear its comprehensive set of capabilities, including R&D facilities, chemistry know-how, large scale metathesis production capabilities, quality assurance and control, regulatory compliance, and process innovation, to get the obstacles out of the way of its clients’ operations. SONEAS offers expertise in developing technologies for the production of intermediates for pharma and non-pharma application, with all its processes being reproducible, transferable, quality compliant, economical and environmentally acceptable.

A Partner for Current and Future Needs

SONEAS fulfils clients’ current requirements and predicts and caters to their future needs from the development perspective, and guides them to steer clear of the challenges. “We are not involved with clients just for business, but we are involved in long-term projects with them that too at various stages of development,” says Péter Ács, General Manager and COO, SONEAS. Primarily, the company works on the development of lower APIs from the late discovery stage, including process optimisation and root scouting. Here, the company focuses on both, client’s immediate needs and their requirements for the next step to make it easier and more economic for them.

Over the years, SONEAS has provided the necessary materials that bring speed, creativity, and flexibility for several biotech firms to move through various product development processes quickly. “After completing the optimisation of a particular stage of product development, we quickly move to working on the optimisation of the later stages. Because of our collaborative approach to client engagement that results in swift activity across the current and future development stages, clients save time and cost significantly,” says Ács. Since SONEAS fosters metathesis, it ensures that there are fewer undesired by-products and hazardous wastes, which, in turn, contributes to faster development. “By fostering faster development and saving time, we enable our clients to bring their product to the market or to a certain stage of development in the desired time. At the same time, we work in close collaboration with the client even in our development lab to prepare for a scale up simultaneously,” says Ács. While SONEAS complete the optimisation of the early stages, it works on the optimisation of later stages to save time.

After completing the optimisation of a particular stage of product development, we quickly move to working on the optimisation of the later stages

Serving Clients All Sizes around the Globe

SONEAS provides services for small biotech companies doing early development, manufacturing materials, boards, pre-clinical activities, or early clinical stages. On the other hand, large pharma companies appreciate SONEAS’s ability to provide the reliability, quality, and timely delivery required for process optimisation and scaling. The company also supplies material for the commercial stage for big pharma companies.

SONEAS successfully caters to the needs of a variety of clients across the globe including the U.S., Europe and Japan. Ács highlights that most U.S. clients are well funded and focus on minimising delays to reach the next stage faster, while European clients usually face a shortage of funds and look at curtailing costs to cover actual needs. SONEAS assists clients in both cases by providing process optimisation for U.S. clients and cost efficiencies to the ones in Europe.

Maximisation of Efficiencies

Ács throws light on a large pharma company’s customer success story that approached SONEAS for assistance in their 3-step synthesis of an API intermediate. While studying the client’s original plan, SONEAS recognised that the reduction step (one of the three stages) involved in the process created a substantial amount of by-product. Subsequently, SONEAS modified the API intermediate synthesis method and eliminated the reduction stage, making it a 2-step process. Not only did it prevent by-product formation but also increased the overall process yield from 60 per cent to 75 per cent.

Ács talks about another instance of a large pharma company that required an API intermediate according to their procedure as the original process had severe corrosion and safety problems that needed to be solved. “Our development work resulted in an optimised and safe process suitable for industrial scale production. We helped the client improve their total yield from 45 percent to 60 percent with an enhanced process,” says Ács.

SONEAS has successfully modified many such clients’ processes to offer them better end-results. The company has also earned a partnership with XiMo, a firm founded by Nobel laureate Professor Schrock and other experts in chemistry. The selection provided an opportunity for the company to use the catalyst developed by Professor Schrock on a commercial scale. This new generation of catalysts contains Molybdenum or Tungsten instead of Ruthenium which makes the trigger less expensive. SONEAS now possesses the know-how to work on the catalyst’s inert nature and perform metathesis reaction at the commercial scale.

As the firm worked with an extremely low catalyst loading and running metathesis reaction on a 6000 litres scale, it had to build a unique treatment system. “We successfully learned and developed this technique, eventually producing around 40,000 kg products this year using metathesis technology,” remarks Ács.

Wide Variety of Expertise and Skills

Alongside, SONEAS’ team boasts of strong expertise in APIs to enables clients to bring their compounds to the market as quickly as possible. The team offers a problem-solving approach and have worked under tight timelines and high-pressure environments, delivering the best results. “Our team is well trained to perform exceedingly even in a challenging environment in a flexible manner. Sometimes, we are overlapping activities with clients so that they can achieve their targets. For example, SONEAS’ team may have started development projects while the client may be working on the optimisation of compounds,” says Ács. Another vital aspect of SONEAS’ team is unmatched transparency and customer intimacy. By always being in touch with its clients, the company offers complete transparency to help solve problems. “Clients appreciate this quality by becoming a part of the journey and offering complete cooperation for the project’s progress,” says Ács. He highlights the example of how SONEAS collaborated with a client located in California, despite having a nine-hour time difference. The company’s experts worked in the lab and exchanged the results with the client in California daily to incorporate them into their plans. This way, SONEAS was able to compress the development time of the project without compromising on quality.

"By fostering faster development and saving time, we enable our clients to bring their product to the market or to a certain stage of development in the desired time"

The company’s team operates from three sites in Budapest housing R&D labs, kilo lab, pilot plants and large-scale manufacturing facilities. Recently, the company has been acquired by a global supplier of speciality chemicals and pharmaceuticals, Uquifa Sciences S.L. The two companies’ expertise brings forth a strong organisation offering a full range of services, including small scale R&D services, piloting, and more. All in all, the company can provide a one-stop-shop for clients. As clients are looking for alternative suppliers other than Beijing, SONEAS is the perfect partner with its facilities in Hungary, Spain and Mexico.

SONEAS is excited about a few of its projects with such robust offerings, some 10 to 20 years old, nearing completion and about to enter the market. Here, an essential plan is to add new manufacturing capabilities, especially on the large-scale front, which will lead to 30 per cent of its growth. The company is also looking at diversifying its market to serve other clients such as flavour, fragrance, and cosmetic industries as they grow rapidly. The company is focused on bringing back Europe’s early chemical industry environment, which has now disappeared, to the forefront through its trained staff and unique approach toward chemical processing. “At the end, we are focused on constantly becoming more efficient and better organised while offering quick response to clients,” notes Ács.