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Packaging World: What are the key issues and trends you’ve seen develop in the last few years?
Tee Noland:
Further reliance on contractors for packaging and manufacturing expertise, and to do research and development for new products, with a shift in the expertise that used to reside with our clients. There’s so much cost-cutting going on and pressure on Big Pharma because they’re not developing new products as rapidly as they once did. It’s harder to get products approved, so the revenue’s not growing, but they still want to expand their profitability. To do that they have to cut costs, and they’ve found that companies like Pharma Tech have a leaner cost structure in place than they do.Another trend we’re seeing is that several years ago, Big Pharma companies had separate divisions for Rx and for OTC. Now, because of cost-cutting measures, they realize they don’t need to maintain these separate overhead structures. They can merge OTC and Rx into one effort and still achieve a lot of the benefits that they were trying to achieve by separating them.What new packaging equipment have you purchased, and what purchasing plans do you have for the next six to 12 months?
In the last year we’ve acquired three new Bartelt horizontal form/fill/seal machines from Southern Packaging Machinery, and we’re in the process of purchasing a rotary pouch-filling machine from Oystar Jones. We also expanded our manufacturing capabilities with two new blenders.
We’re looking at purchasing a stick-pack machine. Again, instead of buying a big bottle, you buy a carton of stick packs, and you can take them as you’re on the go. It’s very portable and supports compliance because it’s easy to open and mix. So it’s something we’ve been pursuing because a lot of clients have expressed interest in that format.
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