Peter Belden, president of Tjoapack US, discusses leading multinational integrations, helping partner companies deliver treatments that address the needs of small patient populations and finding the right balance between personalised solutions and the value offered to clients.
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What attracted you to Tjoapack?
Part of the attraction stems from Tjoapack being a family business, an environment I knew very well growing up. My father was a landscape architect, and working for him, I discovered the challenges and opportunities of a family business, which shaped my direction. Landscaping was not my passion, so after studying business and entering the corporate world, I quickly found my way into the packaging sector.
My career started in flexible packaging, where I held sales and marketing positions. After serving in various industry segments, I discovered the pharmaceutical and life science field in the late 1990s. This is where I learnt the value of creating strong solutions-oriented partnerships with pharmaceutical and biotech clients who needed trusted third-party partners to help them manage critical parts of their supply chains. I have leveraged my learnings by listening closely to clients’ needs and identifying solutions, which has helped me on my way to Tjoapack.
Tell us a bit about the company and its activities.
Tjoapack is a speciality pharmaceutical contract packager that contracts with pharma and biotech companies to take their drug product (DP) from the bulk manufactured phase into finished, saleable goods ready to enter the pharmaceutical supply chain. Eric Tjoa founded the company in the Netherlands over 35 years ago, and his son, Dexter, is now the company’s CEO.
Our activities include oral solid dosage (OSD) blistering and filling as well as secondary and tertiary packaging of injectables and autoinjectors. Tjoapack has a strong and growing presence in biologics, including injectables. We perform labelling and packaging for vials and pre-filled syringes. The company also offers various services supporting supply chain management and related quality services needed for the pharma/biotech community. With operations in the Netherlands and the US, we provide pharmaceutical packaged goods that support global demand for many of our clients’ products, and we are rapidly growing and expanding.
Tjoapack answers the needs of pharma and biotech manufacturers that have already made the strategic decision to outsource a large portion of their activities to bring critical therapies to patients faster and more cost-effectively. Our role is not only to be a flexible and responsive packaging provider but also to expand our offering so that these manufacturers can trust us to keep being proactive in addressing an increasing part of their needs.
How do you fit into the business?
A couple of years ago, Tjoapack partnered with an investment company, Ampersand Capital Partners, which enabled it to take the next growth step, from founder-led to investor-backed business, with accelerated access to capital and the ability to expand the company. The first step was to acquire another family business, US-based Pharmaceutical Packaging Services (PPS), which was also looking for an equity partner. This acquisition fitted Tjopack’s strategy of expanding the company’s footprint beyond Europe and into the US. I joined Tjoapack as the company was looking for someone experienced in integrating a business as well as developing and executing a growth strategy.
In my time with Tjoapack, I have seen many similarities between its US and European operations, particularly the core values and business spirit, with a high-quality and impeccable service mindset. From my experience, these qualities are non-negotiable for a trusted partner of pharma organisations. To see that this mindset was already strong within the larger Tjoapack business was what I noticed and appreciated about the company from the start. This has motivated me and my colleagues to drive improvements to continue to meet our clients’ evolving needs.
The integration of PPS into Tjoapack has progressed smoothly, and I aim to ensure the team continues to drive efficiencies and achieve even better quality service for clients. We have done the foundational work and are now evaluating what each part of the business — in the US and Europe — does best and applying what we have learned across the company.
When working for a business like Tjoapack, respecting the company’s journey and honouring what the founders and their families have done to get to this point is vital. At the same time, you have to set the vision of what is possible for the business in the future. Appreciating people joining the company from various backgrounds, including those from more corporate environments, allows leaders to create scalable, repeatable growth rather than just one-time solutions.
What are the most critical aspects of leading a team?
For me, a leader’s primary mission is to serve those within the business, which starts with active listening. Business is a team sport, and leaders should never assume that they alone have or should have all the solutions and ideas. The people who work for the company, including the ones getting feedback from clients, are the ones to listen to. They help me determine how our internal processes can best serve our teams rather than having them serve a process. That frees up the energy, enthusiasm and responsiveness that any service-minded business must have to succeed.
Every small action matters when you deal with something as crucial as life-changing medications. That’s why connecting our teams with the powerful mission of serving the greater good of making life better for so many patients worldwide is vital. Leaders have to remember that they can’t fix everything and must prioritise the actions that will have the most significant impact on delivering value for clients and patients.
How does Tjoapack differentiate itself in the busy market?
We create nimble and agile solutions combined with high-touch service and high quality. With more flexibility, we can achieve exceptional pack configurations that may not be possible in larger facilities with more established processes. We can offer creative and responsive solutions that may suit small to midsize volumes of products — and our size allows us to work faster than some larger competitors, with the highest level of service and quality.
This fits well with the market trends for smaller batch sizes and unique requirements. As an industry, we are at the cusp of the move from traditional blockbuster pharmaceutical products to personalised medicines. Many molecules currently in clinical trial phases aim to serve much smaller patient populations to address unmet needs. This means that innovators need to handle a declining number of saleable units, where each unit may have substantial market value and offer significant benefits to patients. Right now, we are seeing a wave of regulatory approvals that require the entire pharma supply chain to adapt to be more responsive to the changing needs of drug developers, serving patients whose needs are being met for the first time.
It requires the team to do what Tjoapack does best: carefully listen to clients, work out the exact issues they aim to address and determine how flexible we need to be to offer a solution. These days, the conversation almost always starts with figuring out how the patient needs to interact with the medication and designing packaging based on that. This has to be balanced with the value that the client gets from a specific solution. So far, we haven’t encountered a problem we couldn’t solve as we use all the available and evolving tools to do that better, from data analytics and artificial intelligence to more flexible, modifiable equipment.
How do different regulatory requirements around the world influence your operations?
Understanding the unique regulatory requirements for supply chains in various regions enables us to offer packaging line technology across our European and US sites compatible with serialisation and distribution standards and regulatory requirements in over 40 countries worldwide.
We ensure that packaging and labelling comply with language requirements in different countries, often necessitating multilingual labels or separate packaging variations for different markets. Drug names, dosage instructions, warnings and storage information must be accurately translated and adapted to local regulations. Tjoapack adheres to good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards, which may have variations or specific interpretations in different geographies. This requires maintaining flexibility in manufacturing processes and quality systems to meet diverse requirements. Regulations regarding serialisation, track-and-trace systems and product identification vary globally. We adapt our systems and processes to comply with local regulations and ensure seamless tracking of products across borders. We also maintain robust quality systems and navigate local import and export regulations, ensuring compliance with documentation and customs procedures to avoid delays or disruptions in the supply chain.
As regulations evolve, we are also integrating blockchain as an early adopter to meet the serialisation requirements for a particular market and secure the supply chain further.
By staying informed about global regulations, maintaining flexibility in our operations and implementing innovative solutions, we have successfully navigated the complexities of pharmaceutical packaging in all our partners’ markets.
Besides personalised medicine and smaller patient populations, what other trends do you see in the sector?
The evolution of drug development and the emergence of biologics has highlighted the need for end-to-end cold and frozen chain capabilities in the supply chain to help effectively manufacture, package and distribute these unique, temperature-sensitive medicines globally, balancing the cost with safety and efficacy. These demands are continuing to increase. This creates exciting opportunities for us in the pharma/bio outsourced services space to leverage all the tools we have at our disposal — including those originally developed for other industries — to alleviate our clients’ headaches. Our expertise in handling delicate biologics, such as cell and gene therapies, vaccines and immunotherapies, and our commitment to investing in the latest technologies, positions us well to support these developments.
Packaging is increasingly designed with patient in mind, focusing on ease of use, convenience and adherence. Offering pre-filled syringes and autoinjectors and developing patient-friendly labelling helps us offer human-centred designs and support patient engagement. Products combining drugs and devices require complex packaging solutions that integrate multiple components. Our experience in handling a variety of packaging formats and our ability to provide customised solutions is valuable for kitting and assembly with multiple components and integrating devices with primary packaging, ensuring compatibility and functionality.
By staying ahead of these trends, we continue to provide valuable services to our clients. By eliminating their roadblocks, we help ensure patients can access vital therapeutics as quickly and efficiently as possible.