Fine Organics is a custom manufacturer of agrochemical actives and intermediates.

Usually working from a process package provided by a client, our skills and experience are applied to finding solutions which will enable safe production, deliver yield and quality performance while minimising the requirement for plant investment and so shortening the lead time to first production.

As a privately-owned, single-site company based exclusively in the UK, and with a low staff turnover, Fine Organics is an especially safe location for our customers’ Intellectual Property.

All our business is conducted under secrecy agreement.

During the development phase of an agrochemical, or if production of an established product is being transferred, timelines are challenging.

Go / No-go decisions are often made at short notice, but we are able to progress to pilot scale safely and quickly. We also offer small scale manufacture to simulate commercial scale processes and to expedite early regulatory submissions.

Fine Organics has six labs which are fully equipped to carry out process development work, together with safety studies.

All standard equipment is available, backed up by specialist items (Mettler LabMax reactors, distillation units, autoclaves, multi-unit reactors) and this is supported by small-scale production equipment (100 - 450 litre vessels) to carry out the initial scale-up.

The Development department has its own analytical equipment (HPLC, GC etc) to monitor lab runs and to support new method development.

Although the prime focus of the Development group is to optimise customers’ processes, we also investigate alternative processing routes and changes of reagents or solvents, as requested by our customers.

The aim is to ensure that the process ultimately operated on the plant is safe, robust, and economic.

We are proud of our track record in process scale-up, and can often omit a “piloting” exercise if project timelines require a rapid progression from the lab to full-scale manufacture.

Competition in the agrochemical industry is intense, and cost pressures only increase during the product lifecycle.

Once the business is established, Fine Organics will commit resources in order to reduce the cost of manufacture, through our Continuous Improvement programme.

Structured data collection and evaluation techniques, such as value stream mapping and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), are routinely employed at Fine Organics to eliminate process wastes in materials, labour and time.

We do not market any agrochemicals in our own right, and as a policy we do not compete with our customers at any stage of a product’s lifecycle.

Over 30 years, Fine Organics has built up a portfolio of commercial-scale chemical synthesis skills and assets which combined with a broad operating permit under IPPC regulations, enable a fast and efficient response to our customers’ needs.

50 reactors in 4 production buildings have individual capacities from 100 litres to 20m3 and are typically operate from -30 °C to +150 °C. (Certain vessels can operate outside this range.)

Our reactors are mainly Hastelloy or glass-lined steel to allow operations over a wide pH range.

Specialised equipment includes continuous processing capabilities in photochemistry and vapour phase reductions, and a production scale ozone generator.

Solids are isolated and dried in centrifuges and cone, paddle and filter dryers.

These are in Hastelloy, glass-lined steel, polymer-lined steel and stainless steel.

Distillation and fractionation capacity is provided by glass-lined, glass and Hastelloy batch stills, and by wiped film evaporators.

Typical production volumes are from tens to hundreds of tonnes. We work closely with our clients to manage the upside and downside demand changes which are characteristic of the crop protection market.

We have a flexible approach to the funding of new capacity which can be tailored to the preferences of our clients, to ensure delivery of the agreed project timetable.

All crop protection chemicals are manufactured in accordance with the ECPA guidelines on prevention of cross-contamination and it is our obligation to inform clients, in advance, of any potential changes in our manufacturing plans which may be covered by these guidelines.

Our QC labs operate 24/7, and employ techniques covering all routine industry analytical requirements.

To safeguard the effectiveness of our customers’ products in the field, nothing should compromise the quality of the material we deliver.

For this reason, all process optimisation is covered by our site Change Management procedure, and no process change is implemented without rigorous application of this system.