A Bradford pharmaceutical company has returned from a ceremony in Frankfurt, Germany, with an excellence award.

Paul Thorning, chief executive officer of ChrstecPharma Ltd, based at Norcroft Building, in Richmond Road, said after gaining the award: “It is our great pleasure to have been recognised for our work across the industry through our expertise in crystallisation and particle engineering.

The specialist company took top honours in the Excellence in Pharma Award for Contract Services and Outsourcing.

The awards are organised through CPhI, the Convention on Pharmaceutical Ingredients.

The prize had been presented for Crystec’s modified supercritical anti-solvent (mSAS) technology for accelerated product development.

Mr Thorning added: “Our mSAS technology platform has the potential, not only to add value to product development programmes through improving the performance of medicines, but to streamline product development, reduce manufacturing costs and accelerate the route to market.

“We are very proud of our company and of the solutions that we provide for our clients, as well as our own development programmes.”

The company has a strong research and development base, in both the UK and China.

It supports pharmaceutical companies to optimise the development of their own products, typically through improving bioavailability, stability or changing routes of administration.

The company also applies the strength of its technology to develop its own supergeneric products.

The Convention holds several events each year aimed at bringing together people from across the pharmaceutical supply chain.

Crystec was formed in 2007 by Professor Peter York, Paul Thorning, Qun Shao and Yongda Sun to relaunch supercritical fluid (SCF) for the pharmaceutical industry.

Professor York and colleagues at the University of Bradford conducted the first research into the application of SCF technology in the 1990s. A spin-out company was formed, Bradford Particle Design.

The company was acquired by Inhale Therapeutic Systems in 2000 and renamed as Nektar. In 2006 Nektar closed its SCF business to focus on diabetes therapy. A year later Crystec was formed to continue the SCF technology and research and a number of former Nektar employees joined.