 "Ketan Premani (left) and Steve Duckworth of Clariant")
Increased surveillance on generic pharma companies by the US FDA and rising threat from counterfeit products are opening up new areas of opportunities for Swiss specialty chemicals company Clariant in the country as the company is gearing up to tap larger pie of Indian pharmaceutical market through its innovative packaging solutions.
The company caters to Indian pharmaceutical and healthcare sector through its two business lines - healthcare packaging and healthcare polymer solutions. While its healthcare packaging unit offers controlled atmosphere packaging that facilitates protection of healthcare products from humidity and oxygen, the healthcare polymer solutions business offers products which are compatible with all thermoplastic processes utilised by the pharma industry.
Clariant’s healthcare packaging business, which is setting up a production facility in Cuddalore (Tamil Nadu), is eyeing for growth in new areas such as biosimilars, diagnostics, etc. The plant, expected to be operational in the second semester of 2017, will be a significant contributor to the company’s global desiccant canister production.
"Since biotechnology and biosimilars industries are constantly growing, it has become imperative to enhance stability with specialised packaging solutions. Diagnostic kits for lifestyle diseases are also becoming a major opportunity area for desiccant products in medical packaging. The Cuddalore plant will ensure we have sufficient capacity to meet the growing industry demand as well as export to other markets in the world,” commented Ketan Premani, head – healthcare packaging India, Clariant.
To tackle the challenge of counterfeit products, Clariant has collaborated with SICPA - a provider of secured identification, traceability and authentication solutions and services - to develop a plastic-based anti-counterfeiting system, Plastiward, for pharmaceutical packaging and medical devices. This in-plastic system offers a unique end-to-end solution integrating exclusive, proprietary security features from SICPA into polymer compounds or concentrates (known as masterbatches) from Clariant.
"Plastiward, besides being a packaging component, also forms part of a system that enables real-time monitoring on global, regional or local levels through the data uploaded on a SICPA platform. This provides pharmaceutical companies to actively track their products when in motion, ie from the factory to the destination. Plastiward can add another element of risk reduction and protection, providing a robust, cost-effective, end-to-end, in-plastic system for protecting brands worldwide," explained Steve Duckworth, head of global segment healthcare polymer solutions, Clariant.
Counterfeiting is on the rise around the globe. Clearly, counterfeit medical devices pose a significant liability to their manufacturers and a risk of injury, permanent disability, or even death to both patients and healthcare providers. With the Government of India taking steps to encourage manufacturing of medical devices in the country, through the proposed medical devices parks, the demand for technology to combat counterfeiting is anticipated to grow manifold.
“There is a definite trend for more drug delivery devices (pens, inhalers, pre-filled syringes) to be developed and produced in India, rather than abroad. This means that the risk of counterfeits of Indian brands will continue to increase, even if perhaps it is not so visible. While Indian companies are currently busy implementing ‘track and trace’ to conform to legislation in the US and Europe, this is only a partial solution, is expensive to implement, and can be defeated. However, Plastiward adds a level of security, at the closest point to the drug,” claimed Yann Ischi, director of new channels and partnerships, SICPA.
As part of the growth plans for its healthcare polymer solutions business in the country, Clariant is working on developing products for Indian customers to address their specific applications and challenges.
"Using our dedicated resources, we want to penetrate the Indian market in the same way as we have in North America, Asia and Europe. We are convinced that Indian pharmaceutical companies will understand the strength of our knowledge, and how it helps them in their goals to meet new and tougher regulations, but also give new ideas to support Indian creativity," added Duckworth.
