York biotech wins state funding to turn pharma waste into recyclable packaging
NEUVIOR Pharmaceuticals, a York-based start-up, has secured a feasibility grant from Innovate UK to develop a process for converting pharmaceutical manufacturing waste into bio-based, recyclable materials, in the latest sign of mounting state support for circular-economy innovation in the UK life sciences sector.
The award, made under Innovate UK's Resource Efficiency for Resilience and Sustainability competition, will fund early-stage laboratory work on ZYLON, NEUVIOR's commercial programme aimed at recovering material from drug production processes and engineering bio-based alternatives to packaging formats that are difficult to recycle. The project is being delivered under the banner "VIONIX ZERO — Bio-Intelligent Materials for Net-Zero Pharmaceutical Manufacturing".
Clean-chemistry feasibility trials are under way at the Biorenewables Development Centre in York, which is providing pilot-scale bioprocessing infrastructure and technical support.
The funding takes the company from a funded concept stage into laboratory execution, and sits alongside earlier Innovate UK backing received by the business.
Varun Cruz, founder of NEUVIOR, said the programme was intended to "validate core assumptions in a live lab environment and define a credible path toward more circular pharmaceutical manufacturing", adding that the work was about "turning early-stage ideas into real, testable data".
Mark Gronnow, process development team lead at the Biorenewables Development Centre, said the centre was able to "rapidly and flexibly support innovators with facilities and resources", describing NEUVIOR's bio-based product range as an "exciting" development.
The award comes against a backdrop of increased public investment in sustainable medicines manufacturing. Innovate UK and the Department of Health and Social Care last year committed more than £14mn across 29 projects under the Sustainable Medicines Manufacturing Innovation Programme, part of a broader effort to reduce the environmental footprint of a UK life sciences industry valued at £108bn. Pharmaceutical production has come under growing pressure from the NHS and institutional investors to cut waste and emissions, and to move toward circular-economy models.