Leader of the pack

The trust that patients and consumers place in pharmaceutical, medical and consumer products is hard won. Whether it is a drug delivery device, an inhalation system or packaged consumer goods, safety and reliability are essential. A single failure can undermine confidence built over decades.

Getting it right first time, every time is crucial, and Harro Höfliger, leading European provider of manufacturing and engineering solutions for the pharmaceutical, life science and consumer goods industries, understands this better than most.

What began as a backyard business in Stuttgart for pre-owned cartoning machines has become a global, multimillion-dollar enterprise, with machines shipped all over the world to service a variety of industries. CEO Thomas Weller believes this diversity has played a large part in the company’s success and says the bigger the business, the bigger your scope needs to be.

“When I started here in 1994, Harro Höfliger was already a very diverse company,” Weller tells The CEO Magazine. “We had food, chemical and really big pharma. But when we started to focus on the life science industry in the early 2000s, that was a big milestone and has remained one of the key strategic growth drivers for our business.”

Driving pharmaceutical innovation

The moment marked a shift in the company’s direction, one that has led to its current footprint: a team almost 2,600-strong with seven business units.

“The philosophy is comparable to having speed boats,” Weller says. “If you have several business units all focused on their own market segment, they’re flexible, dynamic and agile. If you want to guide your entire company in a single direction, you’re the Titanic.”

This is why Harro Höfliger has become very good at capitalizing on market trends as well as niche products.

“For example, inhalation products are very highly customized, so we send a clear message to the market that we can do that,” he says. “And right now, cell and gene therapies are trending, so we want to be there to support our customers from the beginning of the development phase.

“This strategy is why we’ve grown more than 10 percent every year for many years, and with so many new products in the pipeline for pharma in particular, we expect that growth to continue. Our role is to help customers translate innovative therapies into scalable and reliable manufacturing processes.”

In keeping with its slogan – ‘All you need’ – Harro Höfliger is truly a full solution provider from lead to production, combining extensive in-house engineering expertise with a network of carefully selected strategic partners.

“For turnkey solutions, only very big companies can provide everything upfront. We have a different philosophy,” he says.

Harro Höfliger’s extensive network of partners makes it possible for the firm to provide its customers with a full line of products and services from the word go.

“What we provide is a seamless solution from development through to commercial production,” he adds. “We do factory acceptance testing to shipping to installation, we’re there every step of the way with our partners by our side.

“Equipment is one thing, but this is a lifetime service.”

Rising to the challenge

Products as varied as coffee, contact lenses and medical devices can be found running on Harro Höfliger equipment, but all share the same level of quality, support and precision.

“You need to think outside the box. We’re dealing with anything from syringes to complex inhalation systems and they’re all equally important,” Weller says.

“We’re not known as a provider of so-called standard technology. We like challenges. The more challenging it is, the happier we are.”

For this reason, many of the company’s partners are universities and unique startups.

“A startup can only survive if they’re innovative,” Weller says. “We work with them to harness their innovation. You can’t simply come up with an idea and expect it to last 100 years. We can always do better.”

So can customers. Weller says Harro Höfliger has to be ready to adapt to changing customer needs, which aren’t always an increase in capacity.

“I think a driving factor in the coming years will be small batches at high price points,” he says. “Cell and gene therapy products are very expensive, so producers want to be flexible enough that they can do a batch of, say, five products and then downscale.

“They don’t want to invest in one piece of equipment for that, and that’s what we have to address.”

Addressing that situation requires creativity, and creativity flourishes when you give your team agency, Weller says.

“It’s all about the people. If you have a great team that’s open, that’s supportive, you can achieve anything,” he affirms.

“Management shouldn’t tell people what to do, they should be there to listen, to offer support when there’s a problem, or support for creativity.”