The Indian pharma packaging industry has been urged to come up with effective solutions towards child safety and elder friendly packaging of pharmaceutical products to safeguard their interest and to aid the growth of the pharma industry.
“Pharma packaging is one of the important stakeholders of pharma industry,” said H. G. Koshia, Commissioner, Food & Drugs Control Administration, Government of Gujarat. “Besides packing, it also protects the product from environment, it carries lot of information, maintains the integrity of the product,” he said. “I have asked packaging solution providers to focus more on child resistant packaging (CRP) so that children should not consume the drugs by mistake,” Mr. Koshia added.
“Packaging should be elder friendly considering their illness, weakness and difficulty in opening bottles. Going forward the geriatric number will grow and appropriate packaging must be developed through proper R&D,” he said, while speaking on the sidelines of the InnoPack Pharma Confex here.
Stating that the pharma industry had to ensure safety, H.G. Ananthakrishnan, director general, Organisation of Pharmaceutical Producers of India (OPPI) emphasised on child-safe packaging so as to not fall in the wrong hands.
He said innovation and sustainability would drive growth in the future. “Innovation is important because very sophisticated treatment will require sophisticated packaging, which will help sustain these medicines, maintain their integrity, and make it available to patients,” Mr. Ananthakrishnan said.
He said emphasis has to be given on developing eco-friendly packaging. “The question is how to make the packaging materials sustainable without compromising on the quality of the product. Not every material can store the medicine and can retain its integrity. There should not be any interaction of the medicine with the material,” he said.
Stating that government reforms and surge in demand had kept the pharmaceutical packaging industry on a strong growth trajectory, Yogesh Mudras, managing director, Informa Markets in India said, “The pharmaceutical packaging market valued at $1.4 billion is expected to grow at a rate of 8.10% CAGR during 2022-2027 and 7.54% CAGR till 2030 and a reach market size of $3 billion.”
According to Chakravarthi AVPS, global ambassador, World Packaging Organisation, the future of pharma packaging would be driven by user centricity and sustainability at large.
