Enantia, a company based at the Barcelona Science Park, has received high honours at the eleventh annual PIMES Awards, bestowed by the association of small and medium-sized businesses in Catalonia (PIMEC). The award was presented to Enantia as the most competitive business in 2007 in the microbusiness category. The aim of the annual awards ceremony is to recognise the best business initiatives undertaken in Catalonia in diverse fields of endeavour.

”

Enantia CEO Llorenç Rafecas, who accepted the award from King Juan Carlos I in person, had this comment to make: “Winning this award is recognition of all the work done over the five-year history of Enantia to create value in the area of organic synthesis technology, which has been applied fundamentally in the development of active pharmaceutical ingredients. No better example of this value creation can be seen than in our more than twenty patents filed over the past five years, all growing out of the company’s research efforts”.

Founded in 2003, the company focuses on the synthesis and development of chemical processes for the preparation of active pharmaceutical ingredients and, in particular, those which are chiral in nature and must be obtained in a pure enantiomeric form. One aspect of the company’s work concentrates on providing integrated services to external clients, but Enantia also pursues its own lines of research. This is demonstrated by the fact that ten of the twenty patents filed over its first five years of operations have been the result of its own research efforts.

Other outstanding achievements that have made Enantia worthy of the award have been its steep rise in turnover, which grew over 70% last year; workforce growth and the level of staff qualifications (currently 29 people are on staff and 85% of them have advanced university degrees); its multicultural mix (some 13% of staff are foreign); its commitment to the ongoing development of the professionals working there; the establishment of a gender equality plan for men and women; and the company’s special sensitivity in matters of work-life balance. In addition, Enantia began work in 2007 on new workspace in Esplugues de Llobregat. Representing another step forward in the company’s growth, the centre has been in operation since February of this year.

Enantia, hot off celebrating its fifth anniversary, started out as a spin-off of Tecnoquiral (Centre for Advanced Technologies in Fine Chemistry and Asymmetric Synthesis), a pioneering research group affiliated with the University of Barcelona. Recently, the company has set up a new department devoted to the preparation of new crystalline forms of active pharmaceutical ingredients and their combinations, and it has already filed its first patent application. This is a field of research which the company believes will be of great importance in the future, bringing synergy to the more traditional area of organic synthesis.