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A view from the UK: Why co-packing is surging in pharma

Drug makers are focused on product development and regulatory issues. Cost savings are possible when the packaging is done externally—particularly for smaller launches.

Pw 7686 Steve Kemp Cp

Contract packaging and manufacturing services are becoming a staple in getting products to market in many industries. One particular hotbed of growth is the pharmaceutical sector.

Within pharma products, Brecon Pharmaceuticals in Wales is among the principal global contract-packaging players. Recently, Steve Kemp, business development director at Brecon, discussed co-packing’s surge in pharma over the past 10 years in a podcast with Pat Reynolds, editor of Packaging World, a sister publication of Contract Packaging.

Following is the gist of that discussion.

Reynolds: We all know that contract packaging is done an awful lot.

Kemp: And it’s growing.

Reynolds: Why is that? When you say it’s growing, is that in the UK or is that globally?

Kemp: It’s growing globally because there is so much pressure now on the pharma companies. They spend billions of dollars, when you think about it, trying to research a new molecule (drug) through their R&D. A new drug starts from an active ingredient, which they need to find, and then have that tested and find where the therapeutic benefit is. Before that, you’ve got to test it in the lab and on humans to make sure that it’s not going to be fatal, to determine how it’s going to be taken, and that there is going to be some sort of therapeutic benefit.

Reynolds: So pharma companies already invest an awful lot in that.

Kemp: They invest in that and then go through a particular clinical trial, which involves getting a particular drug packed. Then you have to compare it against a different comparator, which could be a known product already on the marketplace, or you compare it against a placebo. And these clinical trials take hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to do. And from what I understand, the rule of thumb is that for every 10 trials that go on, only one is successful and gets through to the next phase. So you’ve got phase one, phase two, there could be phase two-A and phase two-B, and then it goes into phase three. And then after phase three, you have to make sure that if it’s still successful, and the statisticians have proved that there is a therapeutic benefit in that particular drug, then you try and get that drug licensed. That could take another nine months.

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