Alistair House from A&r House Ltd to Universidade do Minho

Alistair House from A&r House Ltd to Universidade do Minho completing between 11/10/2022-25/10/2022; the secondment started 05/03/2019-19/03/2019

Alistair House from A&R House (BCL) Ltd, UK, was seconded to UMMINHO, Portugal, to investigate novel extraction techniques. Training occurred, and lectures were delivered to students regarding scale-up issues with industrial process controls.

Having arrived in Porto, I travelled up to Braga. I was first met by Jose Texeira, where the plan for the secondment was confirmed. There were elements of training, lectures, demonstrations and visits. At this stage, there was no knowledge of Covid, so the secondment was split only for business reasons of secondee availability.

A full two weeks of training ensued. This consisted of a series of meetings to discuss both the secondment, the specific work package (WP1), the lecture program and visits.

The lecture program continued for the first week, and visits to UCP partners occurred in the second week.

The second secondment included meetings, lectures and visits to other partners in the north of Spain, Geriatros (now DomusVI), and Anfaco, both in Vigo.

The program’s current stateam was discussed, and proposals were made to revert to the rest of the physical work package team since the product was imminent to arrive with Anfaco having passed through customs. The customs procedure was much longer than had been envisaged, so plans had to be amended several times.

Tours of the very impressive DomusVI facilities were very helpful in understanding the complexities of delivery to the clients.