AHEAD Project wins 2026 FOYA Award

The AHEAD Project (Advanced Heat Pump Demonstrator) at pharmaceutical company Takeda has been honored with the 2026 Facility of the Year Award (FOYA) by the International Society for Pharmaceutical Engineering (ISPE) in the category “Social Impact – Sustainability Efforts”. The prestigious FOYA Award recognizes innovative projects in pharmaceutical manufacturing that set new standards in technology, sustainability, and operational excellence.

SPH was involved in the project as a technology partner and supplied the ThermBooster™ high-temperature heat pump technology for steam generation. At Takeda’s Vienna site, the ThermBooster™ uses waste heat from hot water to generate saturated steam at pressures of up to 11 bar(a), or 184 °C—a typical temperature level in pharmaceutical production. The system provides approximately 1.7 MW of thermal output and around 2.5 tons of steam per hour, reducing CO₂ emissions by up to 1,600 tons annually.

Relevance for the pharmaceutical Industry

The project is particularly relevant for the pharmaceutical industry because high-temperature process steam is a key requirement for GMP-compliant production processes that ensure controlled and reproducible drug manufacturing. The AHEAD project shows that even demanding industrial steam applications can increasingly be electrified and made more sustainable.

“The award confirms the international relevance of high-temperature heat pumps for industrial transformation,” says Andreas Mück, CEO of SPH. “Process steam is one of the biggest decarbonization challenges in many industries.”

The AHEAD Project was implemented jointly by Takeda, the Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT), and SPH, with support from the Austrian Climate and Energy Fund.