Pharmsmart Animal Health has taken the bold step of establishing its own large-scale manufacturing facility on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast to ensure the business has much greater control of its growth and service to clients.

Founded in 2020 by managing director Jim Curkpatrick, Pharmsmart is one of the few privately owned Australian animal health companies currently in operation across Australia and New Zealand.

Having worked in the animal health and agri-tech market for about 20 years and with a passion for the livestock industry, Mr Curkpatrick identified what he felt was a decrease in focus of some of the livestock animal health brands from major companies. 

He built the business on a model of providing consumers access to premium animal health brands and began by acquiring well-known brands Pyrimide, Vetrazin and Rametin and re-releasing them into the market.

Pharmsmart also established a development arm exploring new and improved formulations and delivery technologies leading to what is now an exciting pipeline of future releases – specifically catering for the Australian market.

Pharmsmart was built on providing simplicity to customers.

However, one of the key challenges was being able to deliver premium brands to customers in a timely manner having had to rely on contract manufactures, one of which was based overseas.

Not only was Pharmsmart continuously fighting for manufacturing slots, but there was also the added challenge of importing large volumes of finished goods across the Tasman – creating significant cost, complexity and longer lead times.

In early 2023, the Pharmsmart directors came together and decided something had to change. 

“Pharmsmart is proud to let the market know we now have this facility on the Sunshine Coast,” Mr Curkpatrick said.

“This is not just exciting for Pharmsmart, but exciting for the livestock animal health as an industry,” he adds.

“Having moved from concept to GMP license within a year, shows our commitment to continuously improving and delivering to our customers.

“It also opens new doors by providing options for other animal health companies facing the similar challenges we did. It’s a win for our industry.”

The facility is compounded into one site across two large buildings.

Building one offers large scale bulk-liquid manufacturing across endo and ecto products while building two houses utilities and storage. 

Mr Curkpatrick said features include a paperless documentation process and electronic batch record system which reduce risk of human error and maintain the highest level of quality assurance through the manufacturing process.

He said the equipment is automated and controlled by a sophisticated SCADA system running on surface pro tablets which again reduces the risk of error and maintains the highest level of accuracy and data control. 

The flow of materials through the facility has been well thought out, creating efficiency and virtually no risk of contamination. 

Automated filling, packing and label lines (including laser printed batch and expiry) has also led to a reduced human intervention and higher quality, consistent outputs. 

“We have an ongoing focus on continuous improvement – utilising our new and latest technology, we have the ability to shorten manufacturing times compared with other contract manufacturers,” Mr Curkpatrick said.

“We also maintain the highest level of safety for our team by adding materials at ground level and mixing them into the larger vessels through pumps and in-line homogenisers creating not just efficiency but accuracy too.”

Other features include 160kw of solar power across the two buildings and a closed waste management process, making it one of the most environmentally friendly animal health manufacturing facilities anywhere. 

“Visitors to the site so far have been overwhelmed with the quality of the facility we have created,” Mr Curkpatrick says.

“I look forward to many more across the industry coming to see it including consumers to gain greater understanding in how their product is made.

“Pharmsmart is looking forward to providing opportunities for customers to bring in well-known brands and have them manufactured locally – right here in Australia.”