Waste reduction boosts demand for deblistering, says Sepha
While blister packs offer drugmakers a simple and secure way of providing pharmaceuticals to patients, their robust design often makes it difficult to recover drugs from rejected packages on an industrial scale, generating considerable waste.
This waste can have significant impact on production yields, and hence, manufacturing costs.
Sepha believes its range of technology can help solve the problem. The machines, such as the Press-Out Universal unit, can recover drugs from rejected packs at a rate of up to 50 tablets and capsules per minute.
CEO Aubery Sayers, who will showcase Sepha’s technology at industry events worldwide over the next few months, said that press-out machines can “simplify and reduce the cost of deblistering tablets [by transforming] a laborious task traditionally done by hand into an automated process.”
"It is also less expensive and more environmentally friendly to dispose of empty blisters than filled ones. Press-Outs can even help with inventory management by enabling the repacking of products into alternative formats. From a health & safety perspective mechanical deblistering prevents sore or cut fingers and the risk of RSI or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.”
Sepha claims that its Press-Out machines, which include both manual and automatic units, are some of the fastest on the market and flexible enough to process even the “most delicate tablets and capsules.”
In May a report by Freedonia forecast that “blister packaging will sustain favourable growth based on its adaptability to unit dose formats with expanded label content, high visibility, and built-in track and trace features.”
If accurate, this prediction suggests that demand for deblistering technologies will also increase.
