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Watson Laboratories’ Glipizide Key.In package won the 2007 Compliance Package of the Year award from the Healthcare Compliance Packaging Council . The package, a unique carded wallet, is manufactured by Nosco for Watson Laboratories. The pack functions with a removable key card that must be inserted into a lock in order to access the blisters within.
Two pharmaceuticals and one medical device package were among those to win the Institute of Packaging Professionals’ 2007 AmeriStar Awards. In the Pharmaceutical and Drug category, Mylan Pharmaceuticals chose MeadWestvaco Health & Beauty Packaging’s Shellpak (shown) to answer Wal-Mart's challenge to its generic prescription drug producers to provide cost-effective, patient-adherence packaging.
Synchronized lines, rather than individual pieces of equipment, will be a focus of pharmaceutical manufacturers, predicts PMMI’s Ben Miyares. In this exclusive Q&A interview with Healthcare Packaging, Miyares addresses multiple healthcare packaging-related issues, including mechatronics and robotics, which, he says, "have the potential to transform the development of packaging equipment." He also looks at sustainability, packaging equipment purchase considerations, E-machinery, and counterfeiting topics.
Pharmaceutical firms seek packaging line improvements to cut costs, biologics present packaging challenges, and medical device growth is driven by aging baby boomers. These treatment advances bode well for the healthcare/life sciences packaging community. Packaging materials need to offer protection from point of manufacture to the “last mile” where healthcare products reach a patient. Packaging materials must provide barriers for moisture, oxygen, light and heat, and they may include overt and/or covert security measures to combat counterfeiting and diversion. Equipment will need to package products more efficiently, be validatable and versatile.
Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World, producers of the Pharmaceutical Packaging Forum, and Ipack-Ima Spa, organizers of Pharmintech, announce a cooperative agreement in which Healthcare Packaging and Packaging World will offer promotional support to Ipack-Ima Spa, increasing the visibility for their Italian trade event, Pharmintech, to the U.S. pharmaceutical market. Pharmintech, held every three years in Italy, will next take place May 12th -14th, 2010 in Bologna, Italy.
Pharmaceutical innovation and development represents an important aspect of the Latin American economy, with sales of US$24 billion in 2005, up 18.5-percent from 2004. Mexico, Brazil and Argentina are three largest markets in the region, and were responsible for more than 80-percent of the region’s sales in 2005. That’s according to InfoAmericas, a conductor of research and business intelligence across Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2005, the combined annual growth rate of the top seven markets in the region reached 7-percent.
Developed countries in Western Europe, the United States, and Japan will account for nearly three-fourths of the demand for worldwide pharmaceutical packaging. The Freedonia Group projected this demand to increase 5.9% per year to more than $34 billion in 2011. In its new study, World Pharmaceutical Packaging, Freedonia notes that China will provide the strongest growth opportunities, while India and Brazil “will evolve into fast-growing pharmaceutical packaging markets as drug-producing sectors are upgraded and diversified,” especially generic drugs.
At this year’s Interphex conference and exhibition event in New York, the Healthcare Compliance Packaging Council (HCPC) selected its 2006 Compliance Package of the Year awards. The PocketPak (shown) earned package of the year honors. Reportedly used in England by Boots Pharmacies, PocketPak uses a patented design developed by Burgopak and Structural Graphics.
Drug delivery devices, advances in combination products, and biologics/biopharmaceuticals will present both challenges and opportunities for packagers. New packages and drug delivery methods for over-the-counter (OTC) drugs, nutraceutical and cosmeceutical products are appearing on retail drug and grocery store shelves. (Part II of II)
Whippany, NJ-based healthcare contract packager TestPak unveils its child-resistant, senior-friendly line at an October open house. By the end of this year, says TestPak's Bill Eveleth, child-resistant blister packs produced on this new packaging line will be sold commercially in developmental quantities for prescription applications.
A recent press clipping noted that about 78,000 children under five years old visited U.S. hospital emergency rooms due to unintentional poisonings in 2003. That’s about one every seven minutes, reported the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
Most of these poisonings included products commonly found in the home, including over-the-counter pain relievers, cough and cold medicines, and iron-containing vitamins and supplements. CPSC, the National Poison Prevention Week Council, and the American Assn. of Poison Control Centers released the data in March.
Rose Ann Soloway, chair of the Poison Prevention Week Council, noted that when repackaged at home in non-child-resistant containers, medicines and potentially hazardous household products become even more accessible and dangerous for young children.
Pharma top growth market for flexibles
• Flexible packaging converters ranked pharmaceuticals as the top growth market, with aging baby boomers cited as a key reason for the growth. Medical device packaging was ranked as the ninth-highest flexible packaging growth market.
• The medical and pharmaceutical end-use market accounted for $1.5 billion of the $20.5 billion U.S. flexible packaging pie in 2003.
