About Us

Our Story

Two decades of engineering clarity into pharmaceutical manufacturing.

In pharmaceutical production, getting it right first time isn’t aspirational — it’s essential. Batch rejections, rework, and process uncertainty cost the industry billions. Process Analytical Technology (PAT) exists to eliminate that uncertainty, giving manufacturers real-time insight into the parameters that define product quality.

Expo Process Analytics was born from that mission.

Our roots trace back to the early 2000s, when our sister company Expo Technologies began engineering specialist solutions for pharmaceutical powder processing. By 2005, working in close collaboration with PAT leaders at companies including Pfizer, we had developed early versions of the inline probe interfaces that remain at the core of our product range today.

Over the following years, we combined that hardware capability with deep chemometrics and PAT system design expertise — building a team that understands both the devices and the science behind them. Key figures from those early collaborations, including Steve Hammond and Phil Doherty, remain involved today as Scientific Advisors.

In 2019, we incorporated as a standalone company, spinning out of Expo Technologies to focus exclusively on PAT. That moment marked a step change — allowing us to accelerate engineering investment and dedicate every resource to designing and manufacturing PAT-enabling devices, including our inline probe interfaces and FFSim feed frame simulator.

Our ambition is clear — to become the global standard for inline PAT interfaces and PAT-enabled physical process simulators.

We’ve spent two decades earning that position. We’re just getting started.

Expo and PAT

Engineering the physical interface between PAT probes and powder processes

The early 2000s marked a turning point for Process Analytical Technology (PAT). With the FDA’s 2004 PAT Guidance and the introduction of Quality by Design (QbD) in ICH Q8 in 2006, pharmaceutical manufacturers began investing seriously in real‑time process understanding. But as PAT adoption accelerated, a major bottleneck emerged: applying analytical technologies to powders and granules was far more challenging than applying them to liquids. 

Some challenges were fundamental. Unlike liquid systems, powder blends and granules are heterogeneous at the scale at which most PAT probes measure. Achieving representative sampling requires careful mechanical design. Other issues emerged at the application level: solids foul probe windows, exhibit irregular or disperse flow, and often generate spectroscopic signals with unstable baselines or poor signal‑to‑noise ratios. And unlike liquid-phase PAT—where lab or pilot-scale calibration is often sufficient—solid-dose applications frequently demand model development at full manufacturing scale, driving up the cost of equipment and material. 

Very quickly, the physical interface between probe and process became the limiting factor for PAT in oral solid dose manufacturing (OSD). 

The earliest engineered solutions to this problem were conceived and prototyped by our founders while leading process analytics teams within global pharmaceutical innovators. The success of those prototypes led directly to the formation of our company, Expo Process Analytics — a company dedicated to taking these devices from bespoke engineering concepts to fully robust, manufacturing‑ready products. The technical challenge was substantial: transforming delicate, high‑precision mechanical assemblies into devices capable of meeting GMP requirements for robustness, hygienic manufacturing, HSE compliance, and ATEX certification. 

Nearly fifteen years later, those solutions have matured into a product range now used in GMP manufacturing environments across most of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies. While widely adopted in continuous OSD processing, they are increasingly being deployed in advanced batch applications as well — supporting an industry‑wide shift toward deeper process understanding and greater manufacturing control.