Getting the price right — how the right packaging approach can help keep medicines affordable
With the global pharmaceutical packaging market growing, partially as a result of improvement in the emerging market, there is a potential for supply chain costs to rise. However, approached in the right way, it will be possible to allow medicines to remain affordable for people living in developing economies while also ensuring they arrive in good condition. Here, Paul Terry, director of sales EMEA at Peli BioThermal, goes into more detail…
The global pharmaceutical packaging market is anticipated to reach an estimated value of $86.4 billion by 2023, according to the latest figures from ResearchAndMarkets.com.1 Further, the annual compound growth rate is expected to be around 5.5% over the next five years.1
This upturn can be attributed to the overall growth of the pharmaceutical industry as well as improvements in healthcare services in emerging markets. Additionally, I believe that the emerging markets approach to standards and applying regulations already in force across Europe (GDP guidelines for example), will definitely be a development area for pharmaceutical packaging over the coming years.
Ultimately, this could drive up the costs of supply chains but done in the right way would still allow medicines to be affordable for many people living in developing economies and crucially arrive at the patient in good condition to be part of an effective treatment programme.
Challenges of temperature control
Since our beginnings, we’ve worked extensively with many pharmaceutical companies and their logistics providers. Initially, developing bespoke, tailored solutions, these have evolved over the years into a range that meet many of the challenges facing the temperature-controlled supply chain.
Controlling temperature conditions is vital to maintain pharmaceutical product stability and effectiveness. More recently, we have seen growth in the requirement of temperature-controlled supply solutions, some of which is driven through the development of more complex and more sensitive compounds and biologics. But the tighter regulatory oversight of the thermal stability in the supply chain has also been a factor in that growth.
Therefore, achieving a suitable thermal performance at a cost that is justifiable to the clients and ultimately to the end user is a primary goal. As we’ve developed our products, for example, we’ve focused on the qualified performance levels (high, medium, low) required by the customers so that it is possible to deploy the appropriate level of protection at the right cost for the customer.
Through our design, we have been able to work on achieving a low total cost of ownership by focusing on payload efficiencies and ease-of-use of our solutions. Another way that we have managed to reduce the cost to the client is by deploying reusable systems.
Reusable systems
Reusable systems can not only reduce the associated handling costs when dealing with protective systems in the supply chain but also have the bonus of being more environmentally-friendly.
Our range of reuse systems, called Crēdo shippers, are available in a full range of size solutions — from 2L to full pallet. By using a reuse system, customers are able to reduce waste created from packaging and can offer a space efficient solution, which reduces the vehicle and air cargo hold space and ultimately the energy consumed in the supply chain.
However, these reuse systems may not always be suitable. In these instances, we have developed single-use solutions (Chronos and CoolPall shippers) that do not use composites or glues so that they can be easily stripped down into the component parts making recycling at the destination possible. Although, I would say over half the shipments made with our products are now shipped with reusable systems.
What does the future hold?
As logistics providers improve their return capability and packaging suppliers, like us, continue the establishment of global refurbishment and preparation centres, reusable solutions will continue to thrive.
Outsourcing the management of the packaging allowing a ‘load and go’ service for the pharma companies is a likely destination over the next five years. As for the packaging design, I can see a continued development of effective thermal performance with a higher payload efficiency and reduced material costs as more materials are developed and researched. This leads to better thermal performance, more payload efficiency and reduced costs of thermal protective packaging.
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