As part of Bora Pharmaceuticals’ global growth strategy, the company successfully completed the acquisition of GSK’s Mississauga, Ontario (Canada) facility in 2020. Representing Bora’s first manufacturing facility in North America and its headquarters in the region, the Mississauga site is integral to the company’s global contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) business offering.
With this strategic acquisition, Bora broadened the range of dosage forms it could produce and established a firm foundation for development and manufacturing services in North America. Although geography played a key role in the decision to acquire the site, it was always the facility’s operational excellence, capabilities and environment, health and safety (EHS) track record that made Mississauga such an attractive acquisition.
An exemplary track record
Mississauga’s EHS track record has always been a key indicator of the plant’s overall operational excellence. The complexities of high-volume pharmaceutical manufacturing means that maintaining strong EHS performance has its challenges. In 2021, the Bora Mississauga site had less than 50% of the pharmaceutical industry average in OSHA recordable injuries. This could only be achieved by having an embedded EHS management system and strong safety culture to support it.
Flexible management system
The Mississauga site is designed and engineered with safety in mind but since it manufactures and packages some 700SKUs at any given time for 100 discrete markets, operations are complex, multi-faceted and will continue to evolve as new products are introduced. As such, the management system orchestrating and sustaining the safe work environment must be equally comprehensive, flexible, and embedded. Any new product introductions go through a robust risk assessment to ensure any new risks introduced to the site are properly controlled at the onset.
Safety leadership and culture
Success starts with a strong company culture around safety that successfully engages employees on numerous fronts. Bora is committed to leadership and excellence in EHS and everyone at Bora has a key role to play in helping the business to fulfill this commitment. By living and demonstrating Bora’s core values, leaders ensure EHS is an integral part of the business. Effective leadership, backed by good governance, helps to sustain a strong safety culture.
The safety culture at Mississauga is inherent and cultivated through trust and engagement from the moment new hires join the company. Responsibility is given to every team member to speak-up when they see potential hazards to help ensure a safe workplace for everyone.
Proactively resolving issues
When Bora employees meet for their daily huddle the first thing that they discuss is safety – this isn’t just a coincidence, it’s by design. This keeps safety at the forefront of what we do and provides a mechanism to engage directly with each employee daily to identify and address any safety concerns.
Any potential safety issues or risks are ideally addressed by the employee who found them – but if they can’t fix it on their own, they escalate for support. This bottom-up approach drives ownership and accountability to those who are most directly impacted by the hazards and risks in the workplace and promotes effective problem solving. When employees self-identify and address potential safety issues prior to them becoming incidents they look out for their own safety and the safety of their fellow colleagues. Each Mississauga employee has a goal to proactively identify and address at least 4 safety issues per year.
Going home better
There is an old adage in safety that says, “we want every employee to go home at the end of the day the same as when they first came in”. It is certainly important to send employees home physically the same with no cuts, bruises or other injuries or illnesses – in fact, this is the goal of most safety programs. However, at Bora we take this a step further and strive to send our employees home better – physically, mentally and emotionally. We do this by creating a work environment that is conducive to supporting their physical, mental and emotional well-being. This includes having facilities onsite such as fitness centers, cafeterias that offer healthy options and spaces for employees to dis-connect and re-charge while on their breaks. We supplement this with wellness outreach programs and workshops where there is something for everyone. Mississauga’s approach to overall wellbeing is shared across all of Bora’s current operations including the company’s facilities in Taiwan.
For Bora, health and safety is a part of our core value to “Respect Everyone”. By creating a safe and healthy environment for our employees it not only keeps them safe but provides a working environment and processes that deliver the highest quality products for our clients.
Bora is always looking for great talent to support excellence. If you are interested in exploring careers at Bora, take a look at our job openings here.
