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Biomedical Products Marketer Saves Big With High-Tech Aerogel Cartons

Can thermal-insulated containers increase co-packing's value? American Aerogel's containers cut Advanced BioHealing's shipping costs 40%.

Increases in raw materials and packaging costs are pressuring relationships between product manufacturers and contract packagers. The need to control costs is particularly important in shipping “cold chain” products globally, and pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies are seeking budget-saving alternatives in packaging temperature-sensitive products effectively and shipping them worldwide.

Places to look to ease this pressure include the packaging materials and how they are used. One area that is ripe for review in reducing excessive costs is the capabilities of containers used in shipping temperature-sensitive products. New materials are coming on the market that, when used with the right products, can help medical product manufacturers—and potentially marketers of packaged foods—by keeping the product at the required temperature and also trimming waste during distribution.

Among these materials are thermal insulators, and one of the new ones on the market is Aeroblack, an enhanced form of aerogel, from American Aerogel Corp. In the biomedical industry, Advanced BioHealing Inc., a La Jolla, CA, biotechnology products company, uses Aeroblack panels in its master cases to extend the time that the desired subzero temperature can be maintained inside cartons containing an advanced wound-care product. Besides extended “shelf life,” Advanced BioHealing has reduced the shipping carton size 30% by switching from polyurethane containers and has cut shipping costs by 40%.

In its simplest form, aerogel is a very low-density, low-porosity, open-cell material that is 95% or more air. It consists of a gel of alcohol- and silicon dioxide-based molecules that are linked together. When the mixture is exposed to heat and pressure, the alcohol slowly vaporizes and escapes, leaving the solid material intact as a massive surface area with the capability to maintain temperature-sensitive products under optimum shipping conditions.

Aerogel, also known as “frozen smoke,” has been around since the 1930s in industries such as coatings and insulation. But Dennis Young, American Aerogel CEO, believes the time is right to extend aerogel more widely into packaging.

“The problem has been that it's very difficult to make a monolithic, solid-piece aerogel, such as in cube form,” Young explains. “Aerogels tend to crack, shrink, and powder. Their performance has been better than some competitive products, but not enough to offset cost.”

Anticipating demand from product manufacturers, American Aerogel has patented technology under the Aeroblack brand that Young claims has overcome production and cost barriers, while preserving the material's physical properties. “It has the strength to be the core material for a vacuum-insulated panel and to give high performance at a price that's appropriate for the packaging insulation market,” Young says.

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