With a continued focus on carbon emissions and creating a more sustainable planet, businesses all around the world are seeking new ways to improve their environmental impact.
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For the pharmaceutical industry, this has led to initiatives around waste reduction and decreasing the use of power, air or water used on a production line.
But it&#;s in packaging that pharma must break new ground. When it comes to medication, pharmaceutical packaging is an unavoidable necessity; a vital component of the production process designed to safely transport a drug from producer to patient.
&#;When a pharmaceutical producer needs to pack a drug or medicine and in the production line is a molecule in pill or powder form, it is usually packed into a blister,&#; explains Xavier Martelli, owner at Pharmaflex, a partner to leading pharmaceutical equipment supplier Hapa. &#;This is usually made up of two elements, a plastic film and an aluminium foil. The film will be formed in order to create a cavity where the pill sits and the cavity is sealed on top by foil.
&#;To achieve that, the pharma company must purchase aluminium reels, with the majority of the foil pre-printed by a printing firm with relevant information such as the drug and manufacturer name and possibly regulatory details.
&#;It means that pharma companies are purchasing thousands of smaller rolls and every production process involves finding the corresponding roll in their stock, putting it on the machine and producing it. When the lot is finished, they take back what remains of the roll to stock. They have been doing that for the past 60 years or so.&#;
The result is an increase in waste, plus a considerable number of truck deliveries of aluminium reels, a process which many agree is not the most sustainable or economical. In fact, companies are sometimes receiving deliveries of aluminium foil multiple times a month, meaning there are more trucks on the road every day.
&#;When a supplier is printing aluminium foil, they are also wasting large amounts of foil,&#; says Martelli. &#;This is because during printing you need to feed a big printing machine with a lot of foil before being able to do the proper register of the printing and to achieve the right quality. So every time a company receives 100 reels, they may have on average 12 which are going in the bin.&#;
Although regulatory bodies are asking the industry to reduce their packaging usage, they aren&#;t making suggestions around how this can be done. Sustainability initiatives are entirely up to the producer.
It seems unlikely that the industry will move away from aluminium foil. Thanks to its superior barrier properties, aluminium foils remains the material of choice for pharma. Impenetrable to moisture, oxygen and other gases, as well as micro-organisms and light, aluminium foil helps to keep medication in perfect condition for longer.
But there is a way to reap the rewards of aluminium foil, whilst reducing the environmental impact of packaging production.
&#;All Hapa machines, when installed on a production line, provide environmental benefits.&#;
&#;With Hapa&#;s in-house pharmaceutical foil printing solution, a customer is equipped with a production line using an on-site machine which is able to print on aluminium foil. It means the pharma company no longer needs aluminium foil deliveries each week and those 12 reels that are going to scrap, no longer exist. That waste is basically eliminated, enabling a leaner production,&#; says Martelli.
&#;A pharmaceutical company can also significantly reduce the amount of aluminium foil which they have in their stock, helping to minimise a lot of supply chain difficulties and manage SKU complexity. When you stock only blank foil, you keep a maximum of five reels, with the only difference being their width, leading to just three or four deliveries a year, instead of more than 50.
&#;Additionally, larger volumes of unprinted foil is less costly to purchase than smaller, customised foil reels.&#;
Hapa&#;s in-house printing equipment removes packaging complexity from production and helps to deliver significantly improved levels of operational effectiveness. In fact, the company&#;s entire suite of products can help to increase productivity and improve sustainability, with digital, flexographic, and hybrid systems providing pharma firms with plenty of choice for a solution that works for them.
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According to Martelli: &#;All Hapa machines, when installed on a production line, provide environmental benefits. The green side effect is always there, but it&#;s not measured and customers are often not aware that they exist.
&#;It is not possible to measure the overall CO2 saving, but companies can get a reasonable overview by looking at how many deliveries they have each year. Every time you have a delivery, there is a vehicle driving a large distance to deliver the products, so you can calculate how much CO2 the truck emits per km.
&#;When you are reducing your 100 or so deliveries a year to around five with in-house printing, you can measure just one of the ways you are making a significant CO2 saving by switching to Hapa.&#;
The medical industry is a crucial one and can be a risky venture. The reason is the kind of products and services it provides to the patients. The pharmaceutical side of the industry is the most active industry and has an availability of vast markets both in the Eastern and Western world. With regulatory bodies controlling the products and keeping them safe for users, pharmaceutical products need to be free of defects.
In general, the &#;defect&#; shows up in pharmaceutical products as contaminants, short shelf life, spoiled goods, tampered packaging etc. A packaging defect, however, is the biggest concern. Because packaging of pharmaceutical products has to be efficient enough to keep the medicines away from any contact with environmental factors and human touch. Since most pharmaceutical products are volatile or effervescent to environmental factors like heat, moisture and microorganisms, they need A-grade containment.
In earlier days, there has been a lot of use of paper in the packaging of medicines and pills. But the permeable characteristic of paper makes it a worse containment material than common PVC. Blister packs have long been lidded using paper and polymer layers but even with the PVC layer, the material fails to increase shelf-life or keep moisture from seeping in. Also, paper and PVC have a higher stretching point which makes it difficult to remove the pill, crushing it in the process. This, in the case of capsules, is a bad choice, given its weak structure. So, when it comes to containment, metallic foils for blisters can always be relied on. And since steel cannot be used with materials that are ingestible, only aluminium passes as a non-reactive metal for pharmaceutical packaging.
For a long time, humanity has used aluminium for making cooking vessels and there are no cases of poisoning from aluminium. The metal is highly resistant to corrosion and can withstand changes in humidity and temperature. The anti-permeable quality of aluminium makes it efficient for packaging. It enables the packaging to keep out ultraviolet light, water vapour, oils, fats, oxygen and microorganisms.
Aluminium is used to make cookware for its non-toxic qualities. This metal keeps out most bacteria, doesn&#;t change the chemical composition of the product it holds, plus it never infuses its own taste into the product. Aluminium&#;s quality to keep the product unaltered and keeping out all light and heat makes it the perfect material to package pharmaceutical products. This is why it is used in most blister packaging and alu-alu blister machines to increase the shelf life of pills, capsules and effervescent tablets.
Aluminium has a number of benefits when it is used to pack highly volatile materials such as pharmaceutical drugs.
The natural properties of aluminium make it a great containment metal for consumables. It creates the right barrier between environmental factors and products.
Aluminium is a metal that is light in weight while being highly durable. It has a density of 2.70g/cubic cm which is very low compared to iron/steel which is 7.86g/cubic cm. This makes the metal easier to use and mould for packing operation while providing strength that is close to steel. The lightweight makes it easier to transport and handle in big batches.
Aluminium is the second most malleable and sixth most ductile metal. This property enables it to be easily cast into any shape and thickness. Especially when it has to be layered as a thin lid in an alu-alu blister machine, aluminium&#;s malleability gives it a high stretching capacity to be used with pressure and temperature. Hence, there are low chances of any cracks. It doesn&#;t matter if you&#;re using a cold-forming alu-alu blister machine, or a heat sealing PVC blister pack with alu foil, aluminium will instantly take shape without altering its chemical composition. It can be used in heavy machinery because of its non-spark property which allows faster compression as compared to any other metal.
Permeability is the most dreaded factor in pharmaceutical packaging. Aluminium provides perfect sealing without any chances of microfractures in the lid. It is a material that can resist regular environmental temperature making it the best choice for packing material that can be destroyed with even a tiny bit of moisture or vapour.
With rising concerns for the planet and the need for sustainability in all industries, aluminium becomes the best packaging material. It is highly recyclable and doesn&#;t lose mass to corrosion or oxidation like steel. It gives the metal a long life and makes it great for recycling and reusing in the same industry. The melting point of aluminium is lower than steel making it use up less energy to melt and recycle.
The pharmaceutical industry needs to stand its side in the race of sustainable manufacturing and packaging. Aluminium packaging costs can be higher for the first few batches, but over a period of time the user satisfaction will bring back more returns and recyclability helps attain a sustainable cycle. With the right alu-alu blister machine, you can ensure less wastage of packaging material, to know more about aluminium packaging contact Accupack Engineering.
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