Manchester, United Kingdom, 9th January 2009 - Pharma catalyst technologies company Reaxa now claims market leadership in scavenging, offering lower cost manufacturing processes in pharma catalysis and the sector’s most advanced at-scale clean-up technology platform.

“Cash and cost savings are priorities in the present climate, but the industry can’t afford to simply set process innovation aside until things get better”, says Reaxa CEO Dr. Pete Jackson.

“Sustainable advantage for the longer term will only come from determined development and application at scale of faster, cleaner and less costly production processes.  More and more companies are now recognising the power of scavenger technologies to help meet this challenge”.

A recent third round of funding from Reaxa’s institutional investors has enabled more focus on bulk scale operations.  “Reaxa is now increasingly delivering on large scale product applications, where our technology platforms can have their greatest positive impact on customer costs”, Jackson added. “To accelerate delivering cost benefits to our customers, Reaxa is set to establish low-cost production of its leading products with partners in India”.

With market-proven scavenger technologies, the company is seeing accelerating growth from large scale adoption. Most new drugs require at least one stage of precious metal chemistry and Reaxa’s scavenger technology, built on deep knowledge of precious metal catalysis and process clean-up, allows products to be tailored to help simplify work-up and minimise metal losses - thereby meeting the cost agenda in drug production.   

The company’s bulk QuadraPure™ and QuadraSil™ scavengers are now available in hundreds of kilos, and production of tonne lots will be on line later this year. Additionally, Reaxa’s scavenger range encompasses highly functionalised smaller-scale, high purity applications.  With market acceptance of Reaxa’s differentiated range of QuadraPure™ (polymer) and QuadraSil™ (silica) scavengers, Reaxa is now the market leader in metal extraction and purification technology for pharma manufacturing.

With their potential for re-use, combined with avoidance of costly purification steps, Reaxa’s EnCat™ catalysts can also dramatically cut process costs.  EnCat™ encapsulated catalyst platforms have significant, novel capability in cross-coupling, hydrogenation and oxidation chemistries, and the company is currently trialling its most advanced new product – Nickel EnCat™.

Reaxa says its Palladium Pd(II) EnCat™ polymer immobilized catalysts give easier and cleaner cross-couplings, with distinct process advantages over homogeneous catalysts.  Palladium Pd(0) and Platinum Pt(0) EnCat™ offer safer, re-usable catalysts for hydrogenation chemistry – the precious metal nano particle structure offering selectivity and safety advantages over carbon-supported precious metals.


Whereas standard catalysts typically result in over 1,000 parts per million of metal residues in the crude product, EnCat™ processes can often meet specification – less than 10 ppm – without further purification steps.


Newly introduced Nickel EnCat™ is a non-pyrophoric and re-usable hydrogenation catalyst with multiple high-volume, high value applications in the pharma and fine chemical sectors. Nickel EnCat™ has lab-trialled successfully and is currently moving through “beta test” trials in Europe, North America, India and Japan.


With nickel accounting for 20% of the pharma hydrogenation catalyst market Nickel EnCat™ represents a promising alternative to current generation Raney™/sponge nickel catalysts. These require complex and hazardous processes, are awkward to handle and often limited to single use.