Sepha launches small batch contract packaging service

Sepha, the Northern-Ireland based specialist in pharmaceutical packaging and machinery, has launched a contract packaging service to meet rising demand for small batch production.

Aimed at the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and medical device industries, Sepha’s new contract packaging offer is focused on providing cost-effective, low volume runs of blister and medical device packs within short turnarounds. It means that customers will be able to access timely and flexible production of packs for sampling, testing and research, independent of the availability of larger blister pack lines.

Demand for small batches of pharmaceuticals and medical devices has exploded in recent years, owing to a number of factors, including the rise of personalised medicines and orphan drugs and the industry need to produce small batches economically. This has led to larger pharmaceutical manufacturers and CMOs (Contract Manufacturing Organisations) struggling to accommodate occasional low volumes on their high-speed production lines.

Sepha has introduced the new service in response to this challenge amid increasing calls for support from its larger pharmaceutical customers.

Sepha managing director Paul Smith explained: “Customers were looking to us for support with small runs. Some were having to halt 24/7 high speed blister lines to produce a few hundred sample packs. This is not what these lines were designed for and cannot be justified in terms of line clearance and changeover times. Sepha, on the other hand, is ideally placed to take on small runs, as we have all the know-how we have built up over the years with our laboratory-scale EZ Blister packaging projects, consisting of design, manufacture, process parameter optimisation and analysis.”

He added: “We believe we have something unique in the marketplace. We have a breadth of experience – spanning pharmaceutical packaging equipment, leak testing, deblistering and packaging design – that is unrivalled in the small volume contract packaging space. In the past 40 years, we have partnered with hundreds of pharmaceutical companies across the globe and have brought to market over a thousand different blister designs. This new service brings all these strands of our experience together in an exciting offer that will support our customers’ product quality, time to market and pack integrity ambitions.”