Andreas Koppitz, CEO of pharma packaging at MM Packaging discusses pharma packaging supply chains and the lessons driving change in 2025 and beyond.
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1. What key lessons from 2024 are now driving the most meaningful changes in pharma packaging supply chains in 2025?
The past year was marked by continued global uncertainty, which tested the resilience of supply chains across industries — and pharma was no exception.
For packaging, 2024 served as a turning point, highlighting the importance of flexibility, partnership, and strategic alignment. In 2025, these lessons are reshaping how the industry approaches supply chain management:
Resilience through diversification and local presence. The disruptions experienced in raw material availability and logistics have made it clear: diversification is key. In 2024, pharma companies were actively de-risking by building more regionalised and multi-source supply strategies. In this context, local sourcing has taken on new importance, not only to reduce lead times and improve responsiveness, but also to ensure continuity in the face of global uncertainty. Packaging partners with both local presence and global capabilities are uniquely positioned to support this shift, offering proximity, scale, and the operational resilience the industry now demands.
Partnerships over transactions. In 2024, the need for true partnership became more evident than ever. Pharma companies increasingly relied on their packaging suppliers not only as providers, but as expert advisors, innovation partners, and efficiency analysts. The packaging partner played a key role in optimising packaging design, boosting line efficiency, preventing counterfeiting, and ultimately supporting the patient’s treatment journey.
Agility for a CDMO-driven model – The continued shift of pharma production to CDMOs has accelerated the need for flexible, fast, and reliable packaging solutions. In this dynamic model, where multiple players and timelines converge, secondary packaging must not be a bottleneck — it must be an enabler. The ability to provide agile, high-quality packaging that ensures regulatory compliance, product safety, and market differentiation is now a key competitive advantage. Packaging partners must be equipped to support multiple launches, short lead times, and complex supply chains — all while maintaining consistency and speed to market.
2. Which trends or transformations do you believe will have the greatest long-term impact on the pharma packaging industry moving forward?
The pharma packaging industry is undergoing a profound evolution, shaped by both technological advancements and shifting healthcare delivery models. While some trends have been gaining momentum for years, 2024 marked an inflection point — where experimentation turned into real implementation. Looking ahead, several transformations stand out as long-term game changers:
Digitalisation and direct-to-patient platforms. As major pharmaceutical companies develop their own channels to deliver medicines directly to patients, packaging is taking on a more complex and interactive role. Beyond protection and information, packs must now support patient confidence with features like temperature monitoring, anti-counterfeiting technologies, and digital indicators to encourage adherence from home. This shift redefines packaging as a touchpoint for engagement and trust.
Personalised medicine and cryogenic packaging. The rise of personalised treatments, particularly in gene and cell therapies, demands new packaging capabilities. Cryogenic storage requires materials that can withstand ultra-low temperatures while ensuring product stability and full traceability throughout the journey. This trend will continue to push innovation in both design and material science.
Artificial Intelligence is no longer a distant concept, it's a powerful enabler. Across the industry, companies (ours included) are exploring how AI can boost efficiency, improve decision-making, and ultimately deliver more value to the final customer. From predictive maintenance to smarter packaging, the future is intelligent, and it’s already taking shape.
3. How is MM Packaging responding to continued global challenges like supply chain volatility, sustainability pressures, or evolving regulatory demands in 2025?
MM Pharma & Healthcare Packaging leverages the strength and resources of the wider MM Group, including our sister companies MM Board and Paper, to effectively manage supply chain volatility. This close integration ensures reliable access to raw materials and a strong support network that helps us maintain continuity even in uncertain times.
Sustainability is deeply embedded across the entire MM Group. Our centralised sustainability strategy keeps us at the forefront of best practices, going beyond pharmaceutical regulations to meet the high standards required by industries like food and beauty. Being directly connected to raw material sourcing, particularly from forests, gives us a unique responsibility and expertise that we bring to our pharma clients, helping guide them on their sustainability journey.
Moreover, our extensive global footprint, spanning multiple sites across the US and Europe, creates a robust and flexible business continuity framework. This network enables us to quickly adapt and reinforce operations when disruptions occur, ensuring our clients receive consistent and agile support.
4. What role has technology played in accelerating or enabling pharma packaging supply chain transformation in 2024 and this year so far?
Technology has been a real accelerator for our pharma packaging supply chain over the past year. As a division, we’ve seen how critical it is to have the right capabilities in place — not just to keep up with demand, but to be a truly reliable and agile partner for our customers.
Since 2022, we’ve invested more than €120 million in new machinery and installed and ramped up more than 40 new machines. These investments have been aimed at expanding our technological capabilities, increasing capacity, and ensuring we have the flexibility to respond quickly when the market shifts.
5. What adjustments has MM Group made in its supply chain strategies to adapt to the shifting landscape?
To adapt to a more volatile and complex market environment, we’ve made several strategic shifts in our supply chain approach.
One key focus has been on increasing flexibility and responsiveness across our pharma packaging network. This includes investments into IT systems, particularly to optimise Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) and load balancing across our sites. These upgrades help us allocate capacity more intelligently, respond faster to customer needs, and ensure continuity even in times of peak demand or regional disruptions.
We’re also continuing to strengthen our local footprint in key regions like the U.S., supporting the move toward more localised supply models. The goal is clear: to be close to our customers, agile in our operations, and resilient across the full supply chain.
6. Looking ahead, what do you see as the three biggest challenges the pharma packaging industry must prepare for over the next few years?
As the healthcare landscape continues to evolve, pharma packaging must adapt to a new set of complex challenges, some driven by external instability, others by rapid innovation from within the sector. Three stand out as particularly critical:
Geopolitical and economic unpredictability.
The global political and economic landscape is increasingly unstable, and this directly impacts the pharmaceutical industry’s ability to plan, forecast demand, and secure supply chains. From new tariffs to shifting alliances and regulatory fragmentation, uncertainty is becoming the new normal. For packaging providers, this means building even greater agility and resilience into operations — through local sourcing, multi-site strategies, and close coordination with clients. The need for certainty in such a highly regulated sector makes volatility especially disruptive, and companies that can navigate it with confidence will stand out.
Shifts in how treatments are delivered.
The continued evolution of treatment types and administration methods — including self-administration at home, injectables, wearable devices, or gene and cell therapies — is reshaping packaging requirements. As medicine becomes more targeted and personalised, packaging must do the same. Solutions will need to adapt quickly, ensuring safety, clarity, and ease of use for patients with varying levels of health literacy or physical ability. This calls for deep understanding of both therapy innovation and end-user needs.
Accelerating innovation while meeting sustainability demands.
Sustainability is no longer optional, but pharma packaging operates under strict conditions where changes are slow and heavily regulated. Balancing innovation (like smart packaging or sustainable materials) with compliance, performance, and cost-effectiveness is one of the biggest tensions we face. The challenge lies not only in developing new solutions, but also in creating ecosystems where those innovations can be tested, validated, and adopted at scale — often requiring close collaboration between pharma companies, packaging suppliers, regulators, and technology providers.
7. What areas do you think the industry as a whole needs to innovate to better serve a rapidly evolving healthcare environment?
The pharma packaging industry must innovate across several key areas to keep pace with the rapidly evolving healthcare landscape.
Patient-centric design remains crucial, especially as societies in developed countries are aging rapidly. Packaging must improve usability, adherence support, and accessibility to meet the needs of the growing “future” elderly population. With more treatments moving to at-home administration, simple and intuitive designs that help patients manage complex regimens will be key to significantly improving health outcomes.
Smart packaging is another vital frontier. Incorporating sensors, connectivity, and real-time monitoring can enhance safety by ensuring proper storage conditions, verifying authenticity, and tracking adherence. However, cost and complexity have limited widespread adoption so far.
Maintaining cutting-edge innovation in anti-counterfeiting is essential. Staying ahead in patient safety means continuously providing the most advanced, multilayered security measures to combat the growing threat of counterfeit medicines. Developing and implementing novel technologies that make counterfeiting more difficult reduces risks for patients and protects brand integrity. This proactive approach is key to safeguarding healthcare outcomes and building trust throughout the supply chain.
Cold chain logistics innovation is increasingly important given the rise of personalised medicines and biologics that require ultra-low temperature storage. Developing packaging solutions that maintain strict temperature control while being sustainable and user-friendly remains a major challenge.
Recyclability and sustainability are non-negotiable priorities. The industry must close the gap between functional, high-performance packaging and environmentally responsible materials. Regulatory pressures and consumer expectations are rising, but progress is hindered by cost constraints and the technical challenges of replacing certain materials.
The biggest innovation gaps lie in integrating these areas holistically. Combining patient-centricity, smart technology, cold chain reliability, and sustainability in a cost-effective way. Fragmented approaches and legacy systems hold the industry back.
To respond effectively, the industry should prioritise cross-sector collaboration, invest in R&D focused on modular, adaptable solutions, and engage early with regulators and patients to align innovation with real-world needs. Only by working together can pharma packaging evolve to truly support modern healthcare challenges.
8. What role is MM Packaging playing in reshaping the global pharma packaging landscape - and what do you see as your leadership responsibility in 2025 and beyond?
At MM Pharma & Healthcare Packaging, we see our role as far more than manufacturers: we are strategic partners in shaping the future of healthcare. Our close relationships with leading pharmaceutical companies, CDMOs, and other players across the pharma packaging supply chain give us a privileged perspective on emerging challenges and opportunities. This proximity allows us to stay ahead of the curve and co-create innovative packaging solutions that ultimately aim to improve health outcomes.
We believe deeply in our mission to contribute to patient well-being. From packaging used in clinical trials to everyday ibuprofen, breakthrough GLP-1 treatments, complex oncology therapies, or cutting-edge personalised medicines based on genomics — our packaging plays a crucial role in delivering care safely, reliably, and accessibly at the most critical moments in a patient’s journey.
As a global player with a strong footprint across the US and Europe, our wide network of production sites ensures resilience and continuity. While we benefit from the strength and resources of MM Group — including access to innovation and sustainability know-how from adjacent sectors like food or beauty, and a direct link to raw materials through our Board & Paper division — MM Pharma & Healthcare Packaging operates as an independent division, entirely focused on the pharmaceutical sector. This structure gives us the best of both worlds: the scale and capabilities of a major international group, and the agility to take strategic decisions based solely on the evolving needs of pharma clients. This end-to-end and highly specialised perspective reinforces our leadership in sustainability, compliance, and operational excellence, all tailored to the unique demands of healthcare.
In 2025 and beyond, we see our leadership responsibility as threefold: to listen carefully to our partners and patients’ needs, to invest in technologies and ideas that make packaging smarter, safer, and more sustainable, and to be bold in driving the transformation needed for the healthcare of tomorrow. Packaging may be the last step before a treatment reaches the patient — but it’s also the first touchpoint of trust.
9. If you could share one strategic insight with other leaders in the pharma packaging sector today, what would it be?
If I could share one strategic insight with fellow leaders in the pharma packaging sector today, it would be this:
- Stay relentlessly customer-centric, with a clear understanding that in our industry, the “customer” includes both pharma companies and CDMOs, but ultimately always leads to the patient. Every packaging solution we design, every process we improve, and every investment we make must keep the end-user’s wellbeing and safety at the centre.
Collaboration is absolutely key. No single player in the supply chain can address today’s challenges alone. From evolving regulations to the rise of at-home treatments and personalised medicine, innovation must be co-created — through open dialogue with pharma partners, CDMOs, raw material suppliers, and technology developers.
And crucially, don’t wait for innovation to become urgent: enable it now. It’s not enough to talk about smart packaging, sustainability, traceability or new materials — we must put resources behind these priorities. That means investing in R&D, in scalable production capabilities, in regulatory expertise, and in people who understand how to bridge technical excellence with patient needs. The future of pharma packaging depends on how willing we are, as leaders, to anticipate change and to act decisively together.