Bronway branches out
Product integrity and traceability are key criteria for pharmaceutical manufacturers, and Bronway is taking advantage of its skills in these areas to branch out from media packaging into the pharmachem sector.
Product integrity and traceability are key criteria for pharmaceutical manufacturers, and Bronway is taking advantage of its skills in these areas to branch out from media packaging into the pharmachem sector.
Bronway is based in Bray, near Dublin, and employs around 40 people. It assembles 100 or so machines a year in its factory and its equipment ranges from pick-and-place handling equipment to camera-based inspection systems that will verify features such as a code or bar code, to labelling and overwrapping equipment.
'We felt the technology would transfer well into the pharma industry,' says Peter Ramsden. 'We have experience of a wide range of technologies that we can bring together to provide a secure solution - and that is something we have identified as being a key requirement in the pharmaceutical industry.'
While researching the market, Bronway received enquiries from pharma companies looking for equipment very similar to that which it was already building. It has uncovered 15-20 different opportunities in the pharma and medical markets, three of which are being actively pursued currently.
'Although Bronway exports 90-95% of its output, we have a readily available home market, whose needs are either not being serviced or they are being serviced from the UK,' points out new business development engineer Brian Casserly. 'We are looking for opportunities that others have bypassed.'
The company is looking to identify groups of similar products for which there will be demand, rather than designing and building one-off machines. Initially most of its development will be focused on the home market, but the aim would be to develop products with global appeal and roll them out worldwide
Bronway also views as a major strength its ability to draw on a range of skills to build a complete system consisting of a number of elements, such as sorting, inspection, cartoning, labelling and automation. 'There are no new processes that we have to develop - it is bringing together existing processes and integrating them,' says Casserly.