Roche Colorado commemorates milestones

As Roche, a Swiss health-care company, celebrates its 100th anniversary, Roche Colorado employees in Boulder commemorate their own list of milestones.

The seedling for what today is Roche Colorado started as Arapahoe Chemicals in 1946. Two brothers, Tom Waugh and Dick Waugh, both University of Colorado graduates in chemistry who wanted to stay in Boulder rather than return home to Arkansas, decided to start a business here.

They enlisted three friends and fellow graduates ? John Bartram, Bob Inman and Oscar Jacobson ? and raised $80,000 to launch the business. The group then bought an acre-and-one-half lot at the corner of Pearl and 28th streets, located outside of the Boulder city limits at the time.

By 1947, Arapahoe Chemicals built a two-story cinderblock building and began manufacturing small lots of reagents and intermediates that were sold to other pharmaceutical and chemical companies. Within three years, the company broke even.

?We didn?t have any customers within 1,000 miles of the plant or any suppliers within 1,000 miles of the plant,? Dick Waugh says. As a result, the company had to pursue products with high unit value to neutralize freight costs, he adds.

By the 1960s, Arapahoe Chemicals grew to approximately $4 million in annual revenue with more than 50 employees.

One of Arapahoe Chemicals? first and largest customers was Syntex Corp., a chemical manufacturer founded in Mexico City.

In 1965, Syntex purchased Arapahoe Chemicals for $4.7 million. Proceeds from the sale were divided between the founding partners and 600 shareholders, including many employees.

A year later, Bill Coleman, Marketing and Sales Director, and Dick Waugh, President, returned to Boulder with a key contract to manufacture a herbicide for tomatoes from pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly that required Syntex to expand its manufacturing capabilities quickly.

On an extremely fast-track ? one that Waugh now remembers he probably should never have tried to do ? Syntex managed to buy land that was then outside city limits, develop the property, build the plant and start production ? all in an incredible six months. Once the plant was running, Waugh said, it operated a seven-day, four-shift schedule to meet the contract order.

By 1973, Syntex produced naproxen, the active ingredient for arthritis pain reliever Naprosyn, which became the fifth largest-selling drug in the world. (Today, this drug is sold as an over-the-counter medication called Aleve.) To accommodate its growth, Syntex built a second plant in Boulder in 1974 and a third plant in 1977 at its current 55th Street location.

During the 1980s, Syntex began to implement automation in its plants, which improved consistency in products and overall productivity. Additionally, the company started to undergo a shift away from its previous focus on bulk chemical manufacturing.

From 1984 to 1986, Syntex designed and completed its advanced technology labs, which allowed the company to produce small highly active compounds. The first highly active drug made in the advanced technology labs was for endometriosis, a medical condition affecting the uterus that can lead to serious health problems.

Bob Arnold, Regulatory Affairs Director for Roche Colorado, calls small highly active compounds the ?wave of the future? because they are targeted drugs that require consumers to take fewer quantities, reducing their chances for side effects.

?When (Syntex) was a bulk manufacturer of the intermediate for Naprosyn (now Aleve), we made it in huge quantities; we made 1,200 metric tons per year,? says Arnold, who has been with Roche Colorado for 31 years. With small highly active compounds, the company produces only several pounds of chemicals for the world?s supply of certain drugs, he says.

In 1994, Basel, Switzerland-based Roche purchased Syntex, making Roche Colorado one of its four research and production facilities in the United States. Other facilities are located in New Jersey, South Carolina and California.

By the late 1990s, Roche began manufacturing compounds for Fuzeon, a breakthrough treatment for AIDS that prevents the virus from affecting other cells. Introduced to the market in 2003, Fuzeon was awarded the 2004 International Prix Galien for the most-innovative new medicine.
In addition to manufacturing a variety of active pharmaceutical ingredients for AIDS drugs, Roche Colorado?s 350 employees also currently focus on manufacturing intermediate ingredients for Tamiflu, an antiviral for the treatment of influenza.

While Roche is a nationally recognized name for drug innovations, locally Roche Colorado has gained recognition for its environmental stewardship. Since 1989, the company has spent more than $54 million in pollution prevention and reduced emissions by more than 93 percent, according to John Tayer, Manager of Community and Government Relations.

Roche?s commitment to environmental health has been recognized through several awards, including the 2000 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award from the Environmental Protection Agency. This award recognized Roche Colorado?s success in designing a production process for its antiviral agent, Cytovene, which reduced solid and liquid waste by 89 percent and air emissions by 66 percent.

Additionally, Roche has received the Perfect Compliance Award from the city of Boulder Industrial Pretreatment Program and was named an Environmental Leader by the state of Colorado. The Environmental Leadership title recognizes companies that perform above and beyond the existing mandated environmental regulations.

?Roche was one of the first in the community and the state to realize the environmental impact of the business and became a forerunner on fixing those issues,? says Dave Manzanares, a Shift Supervisor who has been with Roche Colorado for 33 years. ?To be a good neighbor, you have to be environmentally conscious.?

In light of the company?s almost 60-year evolution, Sammi Parsons, Administrative Support in Environmental Health and Safety who has worked with Roche Colorado for 30-plus years, says several key qualities remain unchanged.

?The things that stay the same are the excitement for developing a new drug, the challenge of taking what chemists create in the lab and creating it in commercial size lots, and the satisfaction of making medicines that help people,? she says.

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