Walmart continues to play a role in patient compliance and sustainability within the pharmaceutical packaging space.
A Sept. 24 press release entitled, “Ecoslide-RX Adds 5,600 U.S. Retail Pharmacies including Walmart Stores,” notes that Keystone Folding Box Co.’s Ecoslide-RX is “a pharmaceutical compliance package that is more environmentally sustainable than traditional packs, will soon be arriving to Walmart’s pharmacies.”
Introduced in late 2011, Ecoslide-RX is senior friendly and achieves an F=1 child-resistance rating for customer safety and ease-of-use—two challenges for environmentally sustainable products in the pharmaceutical industry.
“At Walmart, we are dedicated to quality patient care and have proven that adherence packaging assists in these endeavors,” says Sandy Kinsey, vice president of Pharmacy Merchandising for Walmart.
Last December, Healthcare Packaging reported that St. Louis-based contract pharmaceutical packager Legacy Pharmaceutical Co. was investing in automated blister lines for pharmaceuticals in the Ecoslide-RX. Pack.
A March 21, 2010 online story from the St. Louis Business Journal reported that Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging “has stepped up its packaging equipment investments as it attracted business from national pharmaceutical retailers including Wal-Mart, Walgreens, CVS, and Costco.”
The story quoted Legacy’s founder Wayne Welborn as saying: “We went from good growth to explosive growth when we found a way to market directly to retailers and show them how much they could save their pharmacies by selling prepackaged pharmaceuticals. A good pharmacist can do 15 scripts an hour. Legacy’s packaging lines easily fill 6,000 bottles with 100 tablets, each of prescription pharmaceuticals ready to sell with a near zero error rate.” The article noted that new packaging lines would “increase Legacy’s capacity by about 50 percent, going from 38 million units to 60 million.”
In a recent independent survey, the press release said Ecoslide-RX “tested well among both pharmacists and consumers" for factors including environmental, ease of opening, compliance and safety, and ease of storage and transport.
