ISPE Names Eli Lilly Facility the 2024 Facility of the Year Awards Overall WinnerISPE Names Eli Lilly Facility the 2024 Facility of the Year Awards Overall Winner
The International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering has named Eli Lilly's IE2b facility in Kinsale, Ireland, winner in the 2024 FOYA Innovation Category for its hybrid manufacturing platform.

ISPE has recognized Eli Lilly Kinsale Limited as the Overall Winner of the 2024 Facility of the Year Awards (FOYA) for its IE2b facility based in Kinsale, Ireland. The winner was announced and formally recognized during ISPE's FOYA Banquet and Awards Celebration held in conjunction with the 2024 ISPE Annual Meeting & Expo in Orlando, Florida. The vision for Eli Lilly’s IE2b project was to marry innovative, advanced technologies into a first-of-its-kind hybrid manufacturing platform in order to optimize synthetic peptide production for use in life-saving medications.
Eli Lilly's IE2b was recognized as a winner in the 2024 FOYA Innovation Category for its hybrid manufacturing platform. The novel platform uses solid phase synthesis of small, high-purity peptide fragments with efficient liquid phase peptide bond-forming chemistry and leverages continuous processing technology and principles. Process analytical technology, a cutting-edge nanofiltration system, and a digital material tracking model all helped the facility significantly boost annual throughput while minimizing risk, and inefficiency– all to produce high-volume, complex peptides at a commercial manufacturing scale.
Here is the video of the Kinsale facility:
"Designing this platform and constructing the resulting manufacturing facility presented more barriers than could be imagined, but we brought a group of fantastic people together who were ready to transform the status quo regarding traditional peptide-based medicine manufacturing concepts," said Darragh Mcdonagh, program leader, Eli Lilly Kinsale. "We are thrilled to be recognized as the 2024 FOYA Overall Winner and it shines a light on our team's dedication to creating a novel industry-leading manufacturing facility that will ultimately bring a more reliable supply of medicine to our patients worldwide."
The build started when COVID-19 pandemic-related shutdowns began in Ireland, forcing the team to adjust their timelines and proceed with caution while developing the novel synthetic peptide manufacturing platform and constructing the new facility on an operational manufacturing campus.
Lilly's headquarters staff trialed the platform's miniaturized prototypes to inform design and construction, which IE2b staff later manufactured into the full-size versions on-site – all while the facility structure was being built. Despite the challenges of maintaining a global team project during the COVID-19 pandemic, the team maintained continuous collaboration, effective planning, and rigorous safety protocols. This resulted in the facility's completion on schedule, with no workplace-related COVID cases or significant safety disruptions after more than 1.6 million construction hours.
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