Vapourtec, based in Fornham St Genevieve, near Bury St Edmunds, celebrates 20 years at the cutting edge of technology

A company which has helped advance the technology to create life-saving drugs is celebrating its 20th anniversary.

Vapourtec, based at Park Farm Business Centre, Fornham St Genevieve, near Bury St Edmunds, was founded in 2003 by Duncan Guthrie.

It has been instrumental in developing continuous flow chemistry equipment – which it now supplies worldwide.

Flow chemistry is a faster, more efficient and cost effective way of creating medical drugs and chemicals, used for pharmaceutical, academic and industrial research.

Vapourtec’s systems are used by chemists to create drugs for conditions such as malaria, breast cancer, and more recently diabetes and weight loss.

Over the past 20 years, the company has grown to 30 employees.

It has also recently expanded adding a purpose-built, 2,600 sq ft facility alongside its at their 4,600 sq ft headquarters.

The extra unit includes increased laboratory facilities and assembly space to support the development and manufacture of the company’s growing range of products.

Founder and managing director, Duncan Guthrie, said: ““Back in 2003 I could only have dreamed of the impact that we would have had.

“Our success has mirrored that of the flow chemistry sector as a whole. Over the past two decades, the growth in the prominence and productive potential of flow methodology has been spectacular.

“It offers several advantages over traditional batch chemistry including safety, efficiency, sustainability and scalability. It is exciting to see reaction concepts explored at lab scale 20 years ago now being pushed through by innovative companies into safe, efficient and sustainable chemical manufacturing routes.

“Vapourtec would not be here today without the support and assistance of many scientists who have given advice and feedback, collaborated with us, or simply believed in us enough to purchase our products.

“We are proud to have played our small part by helping to facilitate and enable so many exciting discoveries, and we will continue to work with and for the industry and academia to expand the scope and capabilities of continuous process technologies.”