1.  The following may have suffered in translation, but I enjoyed it.  As a former employee, I have fond memories and very high regard for Eli Lilly and Company. Nevertheless, it is interesting that a letter was circulated in the US criticizing the Eastern European company that was selling tylosin that had only 80% active ingredient when the Lilly product had 85%.  The Bulgarian antibiotic company was delighted that they were viewed as a serious competitor and quickly rose to the challenge by increasing the activity in their product to 85%.  Soon the Lilly product went to 90% to be followed quickly by an equivalent rise in the Bulgarian product.  Now the activity in each is roughly 95%.  I wonder how Lilly can explain why 85% was good enough until they were faced with competition. This also attests to the technical skills of the Bulgarian research and development group.

2.  It seems that there are only about a dozen desktop computers in the company.  A leap in productivity in process development should be possible after an influx of personal computing, and better database management should pay off.  They have done a quite respectable job without much computing but should advance much more quickly with it.

3.  A different consultant will handle environmental matters, but I found that the company had clean operations.  There were no bad smells.  Solvent odors were not objectionable in the processing areas and were undectable elsewhere. Storm water is collected in a separate sewer system and goes untreated into the river.  Plant wastes get only treatment by sedimentation before being sent to the municipal sewage treatment plant where there is biological processing.  A fee is paid to the city, much the same as common practices in the US.