Our History

1938

The Beginning

Engineer and entrepreneur, Alberto Martinoli was born in 1938. He attended his engineering studies in Milan. He started to work in his father’s company that was specialized in designing and manufacturing mechanical mills. He then came across the concept of the micronization of chemical powders and started to develop his own technology by designing, manufacturing and assembling fluid jet mills in the ‘60s for the chemical industry.

1978

Foundation of Microchem

Soon his skills as an engineer and an innovator join those of an entrepreneur and he decides to found Microchem in 1978 in order offer contract micronization services also to the pharmaceutical industry in a period when this process was becoming increasingly important to meet at best the bioavailability needs of the human body from an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API).

1981

Growth of Microchem

The company grows rapidly and moves to its current headquarter in Via Turati, a structure more suited to the new market needs, with more space and the possibility of planning further growth. The production capacity is tripled with the installation of three micronization booths and a quality control laboratory. An office building is added to house the administrative, logistics, quality assurance and procurement offices.

1986

Foundation of Jetpharma

In time, the business grows up rapidly and in 1986 he founded Jetpharma in Switzerland in order to better serve international highly regulated markets, specifically Europe, North America and Japan. For years, the experiences of both companies have been conveyed on this technology until reaching a technical and productive potential such as to be able to deal with any particle size engineering issue.

the 2000's

The Technology of Isolators

At the same time, the technological issues relating to the new types of emerging APIs, the High Potent Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (HPAPIs) and oncologic molecules, the Cytostatics/Cytotoxics are addressed. The plant engineering and process knowledge grow and skills in safety matters are developed in relation to the high activity of High Potent molecules with respect to very low dosages. In keeping with its pioneering tradition, the first isolator was engineered, built and assembled, and became operational starting from 2001. This technology that originates from the nuclear sector, for the containment of radiations, was re-engineered for the safe micronization of HPAPIs. Starting from the 2000s, the development of the isolator technology led to the creation of a generation of machines that allow the scale up from R&D batch sizes to commercial ones regardless of the volumes produced.

2017

Foundation of Munit

In 2017, Munit was created in order to better organize the operational skills of Jetpharma and Microchem and to exploit the technical and specialist synergies for the benefit of the services offered to customers. At the same time, the expertise and ability to adapt the plants to complex micronization processes, which require a high level of customization of the service, is growing. This includes the ability to adapt the plants also to other technologies, which can thus be integrated to extend the range of services and therefore to modulate each individual particle size engineering process according to the requirements identified for API processing.

2020

The Second Generation

In 2020 Alberto Martinoli carries on his role as Chairman of the companies’ BoDs, while handing over his executive functions to his sons, Luca and Stefano. Their presence gives new energy and consolidates the commitment of the companies at an international level. An industrial expansion project takes shape in Microchem in 2021, to keep up with the state of the art of safety standards for the handling of highly active classified molecules, to better serve the customer and protect the pharmaceutical product value chain.

JetPharma SA

Microchem S.R.L.

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