From Alfred Nobel into the third millennium
Over 100 years of explosive and hazardous materials experience provides a solid foundation for our cGMP compliant energetic capabilities within Cambrex Pharma.  Our energetic heritage dates back to the 19th century and the work of Alfred Nobel at our Karlskoga plant in Sweden.  Our expertise in this area has also been demonstrated at our Charles City site in Iowa where we safely work with such materials as hydrazine at commercial scale.

We have state-of-the-art process safety analysis techniques, extensive in-house safety assessment procedures and disciplined and rigorous process development capabilities.  This results in safe and reliable energetic chemistries in a fully compliant cGMP operating environment.

Our in-house process safety testing utilizes two main instruments: Differential Scanning Calorimeter (DSC) and Chemical Process Analyzer (CPA), a reaction calorimeter.This combination is an extremely useful and powerful tool that allows early identification of potential hazards before processes are implemented in the plant.

The keys to safe processes of energetic chemistries are:

• early and accurate identification of process hazards
• suitable manufacturing equipment and facilities
• operational expertise

Cambrex Pharma has all three of these key attributes.  We are able to rapidly assess your lab, pilot or commercial scale energetic processes and will provide you timely feedback regarding any potential manufacturing issues.

Our high energy expertise includes both energetic reactions and the handling of dangerous compounds.  Typical definitions for these reactions and compounds are:

High Energy Reaction - a chemical reaction giving an adiabatic temperature rise of more than 200 °C.
High Energy Compound - a chemical compound with an energy decomposition of more than 1500 j/g.

Examples of some of our core competencies in these areas include:

Technologies
Nitration with nitric acid
Catalytic Hydrogenations
Oxidation with nitric acid
Oxidation with hydrogen peroxide
Diazotization with sodium nitrite
Grignard – formation and reaction
Preparation of organic azide with sodium azide
Reduction with LiAlH4
Lithiation with BuLi/HexLi
Sodium hydride as reagent
Hydroxylamine-HCl as reagent
High energy products
High energy reagents/intermediates
Low thermal stability intermediates

The development of a Process Safety Concept