Hristo Popov

I’ve been working in Sopharma AD for 11 years. I’m a chemical engineer. I started in Sopharma as deputy chief of Tablet plant. After that when a team was created for designing and building the new OSD Plant in Sofia I was assigned as a project director - responsible for the technological part and the process equipment.

The project was for a completely new plant for the production of solid dosage forms, compliant with modern requirements for good manufacturing practice and with a capacity of 4 billion tablets per year. The project started in early 2007. Together with a leading German engineering company we designed a concept that later, with Sopharma’s design, team was further developed into conceptual and detailed design. The financial crisis of 2008 delayed the project. In early 2010, the management of the company decided to finally execute the project in its full size. Construction, equipment and commissioning of the plant took a little more than three years. The investment was over 75 million BGN. Together with the OSD Plant were built also modern High bay warehouse and a Laboratory administrative building.

The big challenge was to procure, install, commission, validate and put into operation the manufacturing equipment consisting of 43 separate installations with more than 100 different machines within two and a half years. This is what the team of Sopharma finished successfully and is something I’m proud of in my professional career. Together with this big project we also executed an additional one with European co-financing for acquiring of part of the process equipment with the grant being just over 3.9 million BGN.

For this project Sopharma received a certificate for first class investor and an award for Logistics and production building of 2013.

I am currently Deputy Director of the OSD Plant for the technical part. The work is dynamic and interesting. The team is good and I'm glad to be a part of it.