Almac Group expands commercial capabilities to meet industry demand for pediatric formulations.
Almac Group, a global contract development and manufacturing organization, has expanded its MHRA/FDA-approved U.K. commercial packaging facility with the acquisition of a stick sachet packaging line from Merz.
The acquisition comes in response to growing demand for the specialist packaging solutions for pediatric drug products, specifically powders, minitabs or granules into stickpack sachets. This investment was made in partnership with a long-term commercial U.S. client who having worked with Almac since 2010, now sought an integrated commercial manufacturing and packaging solution for the EU supply of their new pediatric formulation drug product.
In line with EU Pediatric Regulations (EC1901/2006 and EC1902/2006), the U.S. client implemented its Pediatric Investigation Plan (PIP) and developed and launched an age appropriate formulation to meet infant patient needs; with Almac manufacturing the pediatric granules, primary packing into stickpack sachets and then into wallet cards.
To facilitate the packaging of pediatric dosage forms, investment was made in Merz Stickpack technology. The SBL-50 stickpack technology is a fully automated forming, filling and sealing machine capable of filling 80 stickpacks/minute. This flexible technology not only meets the stickpack presentation needs of Almac’s current clients but has capacity to process new pediatric drug products (powders, granules and minitabs) that require this specialist packaging.
“Almac continue to expand our commercial packaging capabilities and the addition of this stickpack solution strengthens Almac’s position in providing flexible services to meet various market needs from small volume orphan drug products to large scale marketed products in both adult and pediatric forms,” David Downey, VP commercial operations at Almac, commented.
“The innovative and committed team at Almac set up a compact, highly flexible packaging solution for micro tablets and powders in stickpacks to service the growing demand for this user-friendly dosage form,” Holger Merz, general manager at Merz, said. “Advanced primary packaging forms like stickpacks offer highest flexibility for diversification of pharmaceutical products.”
The Almac Group is an established contract development and manufacturing organization that provides a range of integrated services to the pharmaceutical and biotech sectors globally. The services range from R&D, biomarker discovery development and commercialization, API manufacture, formulation development, clinical trial supply, IXRS technology (IVRS/IWRS) through to commercial-scale manufacture.
The company is privately owned and now employs more than 4,500 employees. It is headquartered in Craigavon, Northern Ireland with operations in the U.K., Ireland, across the U.S. (Pennsylvania, North Carolina and California) and in Asia (Singapore and Tokyo). www.almacgroup.com.
