“Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and Cos­met­ic Process­es” (PPC) is the name of a new elec­tive course of study in the major Process Engi­neer­ing. The first stu­dents joined the PPC course in the spring semes­ter of 2024 and began their appren­tice­ship last Sep­tem­ber. The aim is to have class­es of 16 to 20 students.

In response to demand from French phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and cos­met­ics man­u­fac­tur­ers for engi­neer­ing train­ing in the field of process indus­tri­al­iza­tion for for­mu­lat­ed prod­ucts, in ear­ly 2022 Tours Métro­pole brought togeth­er UTC’s Process Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment and the IMT train­ing cen­tre in Tours to col­lab­o­rate. “UTC cur­rent­ly offers a Mas­ter’s degree in for­mu­lat­ed prod­uct engi­neer­ing, the aim of which is to pro­vide stu­dents with the knowl­edge and research meth­ods need­ed to devel­op and imple­ment for­mu­lat­ed prod­ucts. It there­fore aims to train “for­mu­la­tors” in the agri-food and para­chem­i­cal sec­tors, with­out plung­ing too far into the scal­ing aspects of for­mu­la­tion (from lab­o­ra­to­ry to pilot to indus­tri­al scale). UTC there­fore has the sci­en­tif­ic and ped­a­gog­i­cal skills to define a train­ing path­way in the field of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and cos­met­ic process­es with­in its process engi­neer­ing train­ing pro­gram”, assures Olivi­er Schoefs, Direc­tor of UTC’s Indus­tri­al Process Engi­neer­ing Depart­ment. As for the IMT train­ing cen­tre in Tours, it offers diplo­ma and appren­tice­ship tech­ni­cal train­ing at lev­els rang­ing from Bac + 2 to Bac + 3, in the field of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and cos­met­ics, draw­ing on a 2 000 m² tech­ni­cal plat­form equipped with facil­i­ties for study­ing mul­ti-phase unit oper­a­tions from lab­o­ra­to­ry scale to pre-indus­tri­al pilots. “The col­lab­o­ra­tion between UTC and IMT Tours con­sti­tut­ed a nat­ur­al step in offer­ing an appren­tice­ship pro­gramme in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and cos­met­ic process­es as part of UTC’s Process Engi­neer­ing major.

The 1st PPC class gets off to a flying start

The cours­es are divid­ed into four blocks. The first cov­ers the envi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic and reg­u­la­to­ry aspects of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and cos­met­ics indus­tries. The aim of the sec­ond block is to design a devel­op­ment strat­e­gy for a galenic process. The third block aims to study unit oper­a­tions on a pilot scale, also using dig­i­tal tools. Final­ly, the fourth block will lead to the dimen­sion­ing of the indus­tri­al process and its tech­ni­cal, eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal eval­u­a­tion. All cours­es will revolve around a “sil­ver thread” project involv­ing the indus­tri­al trans­po­si­tion of the pro­duc­tion of a for­mu­lat­ed phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal or cos­met­ic prod­uct. “The ambi­tion of this pro­gram is to train process engi­neers capa­ble of design­ing, siz­ing and opti­miz­ing equip­ment for the indus­tri­al pro­duc­tion of drugs or cos­met­ics based on prod­uct for­mu­la­tions devel­oped in the lab­o­ra­to­ry. The pro­gramme was designed and is run and man­aged by UTC and ITM, thanks to the ini­tial impe­tus pro­vid­ed by Tours Métro­pole. 80% of teach­ing is car­ried out by ITM staff and 20% by UTC staff. Com­pa­nies in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and cos­met­ics sec­tors have respond­ed very pos­i­tive­ly, and the stu­dents have found their future employ­er com­pa­nies very eas­i­ly,” enthus­es Olivi­er Schoefs. Demand is high, as we expect­ed. Process engi­neers in the PPC stream are des­tined to work not only in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and cos­met­ics indus­tries, but also in oth­er sec­tors involv­ing mul­ti­phase process­es, such as nuclear pow­er, food pro­cess­ing and waste treatment.

KD