A prescription for excellence in healthcare packaging

Published: 28-Jan-2014

Essentra Packaging exhibits at Pharmapack Europe 2014

At this year’s Pharmapack show in Paris from 12-13 February, Essentra Packaging will be demonstrating its latest products in Hall 5 on Stand 148, reflecting its rebranding from Contego last year. Operating from nine manufacturing sites across Europe, Essentra offers an unrivalled range of innovative packaging solutions to meet the rapidly changing requirements of the pharmaceutical and healthcare markets.

Working in effective partnership with customers and suppliers, the company is committed to quality, flexibility and creativity, delivering a product range that includes cartons, leaflets, self-adhesive labels, tapes, cold-form, blister pack foils and security.

Cartons

Produced in a wide range of styles, constructional designs and graphical print finishes, cartons can be printed on different substrates and thicknesses of material, incorporating performance varnishes, security and tamper-evident features and Braille embossing where needed. Recent innovations include the Parenteral Paper Pack (PPP), a carton designed to hold and protect glass vials and a Leaflet in a Carton where the leaflet is pre-glued into the carton eliminating the need for insertion on the filling line.

Leaflets

Leaflets are printed and folded on state-of-the-art technology to provide accurately folded, high quality leaflets for pack insertion on high-speed lines, as well as meeting the requirement for increasingly larger leaflets to accommodate legislative demands and multi-lingual versions. Latest innovative formats include: PiggyBack and Triple PiggyBack, two or three folded leaflets glued together back-to-back to provide the maximum printing space in a compact design, and Plurium, a multi-page folded booklet which offers separate sections for different audiences and languages.

Labels

Self-adhesive label products are produced on a wide range of substrates and supplied on a roll suitable for automated application on high-speed packaging lines. There are also specialist processes such as Braille printing, extra security slitting and over-laminating to prevent product contamination.

Innovative compact options are on offer to provide greater surface area for patient information including: Peel ‘n Read, Peel ‘n Reveal and Label Extra.

Blister pack foils

The state-of-the-art Class 100,000 standard cleanroom for printing blister pack foils offers six-colour capability and the flexibility to print onto a range of different foils and thicknesses to meet individual customer specifications, including child resistance and multi-colour flexographical print.

Blister pack foils can be printed in up to six colour on a range of different foils and thicknesses

Blister pack foils can be printed in up to six colour on a range of different foils and thicknesses

Tapes and security

A variety of tamper and authentication solutions can be built into products to meet individual needs.

New technology enables the introduction of additional overt and covert security measures to ensure product integrity and work against counterfeiting and falsification. Essentra’s award-winning Design Studio provides design capability for customers, adding value and delivering customised design concepts and artwork creation for packaging, building in security as part of the overall design.

Security solutions range from overt features such as holograms which can provide on-shelf pack authentication to consumers through to covert and forensic technologies which only trained investigators can identify.

Design and security print play a key part in any secure solution through using different print techniques such as gravure, UV flexo, litho, screen and digital printing capability. Overt techniques such as Numismatics, which create reliefs to designs so they can appear to be raised or inverted, can be added alongside covert techniques like Microtext which can provide a highly secure and cost-effective means of protecting a brand.

The Essentra Packaging portfolio of security products ensures there is a tamper evidence and authentication solution relevant to each brand.

Falsified Medicines Directive

Looking ahead, with the EU Directive on Falsified Medicines set to come into force in 2016, there are significant demands on the industry to both verify authenticity and demonstrate tamper evidence. While much of the focus is on serialisation of packs, tamper evidence is also a key component of the directive and so there are greater opportunities for packaging and the use of foils, labels, tapes and overwraps together with creative carton or pack design.

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