Industry Insight Sustainability is the Latest Trend in the Pharma Space

Related Vendors

Steriline S.r.l.

IMA INDUSTRIES S.R.L Unipersonale

Romaco Group

TURCK GmbH

Frewitt fabrique de machines SA

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ProMinent GmbH

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The pharmaceutical industry aims to use the most advanced and innovative solutions for speeding up and scaling their production but now the concept of ‘sustainability’ has become an industry trend and this has changed the dynamics of pharma solution suppliers. Read all about this green transition along with the latest pharma solutions available in the market.

The global pharmaceutical industry recently came into the limelight as Covid-19 created panic all over the world. The urgent need to find a life-saving cure for a disease that never existed was a challenge in every sense for the sector, but it pulled through victorious! This was possible only with the help of existing innovative technologies and equipment which helped to upscale production within just a few months.

For instance, the Serum Institute of India, which is the world's largest vaccine manufacturer and one which produced the Covishield vaccine in partnership with the pharma major Astrazeneca, has a huge vaccine production facility in Pune, India. The unit is equipped with automated lines and is used for high speed vial washing, filling, stoppering and sealing via sophisticated tunnel systems. The machines function at a speed of 500 containers per minute and also offer filling accuracy to ensure consistency. The facility also comprises robotic arms that are installed for virus handling, cell factory and cell cube for growing cells along with high resolution CCD cameras and electronic controlled panel for automatic inspection at the manufacturing plant. This is just one example of how industry players are modernizing their plants by using automation solutions in the production line.

Trends in the industry

In this background, it is evident that clients in the pharma space are always looking for effective automation solutions that will help them to scale up and accelerate production but nowadays, there is also another vital factor that pharma firms are on the lookout for and that’s – sustainability.

“In the past few years, most of the customers have been looking for more automated solutions but with a strong focus on sustainability,” shares Claudio Pontieri, Sales Area Manager, Steriline. “Sustainability is a value that we give great importance to in the technological innovation of our solutions. In this way, with the right mix of sustainability and automation we are able to supply more modern and technological automation that pay attention to the environment.”

Adding to this, Jörg Pieper, CEO, Romaco Group states, “Sustainability has been an issue for a while, but the importance it has for the pharmaceutical industry now is a paradigm shift. It starts with customer expectations and goes all the way to corporate guidelines and legal requirements. What pharmaceutical companies therefore need from machinery solution providers today is experience in holistic sustainable solutions and the ability to deliver them reliably. If you can meet that demand, it is a great opportunity.”

Highlighting another trend, Thomas Fricke, Ima Pharma Commercial Director, Ima Safe Pharma & Cosmetic Sales & Marketing Director, Ima Spa mentions, “The pharmaceutical world has never been as demanding as it is today. Pharma customers are looking not only for new solutions with respect to sustainability and digitalization but also for innovation as well as reliable and tailor-made, integrated processing and packaging lines.”

Latest solutions in the market

One of the last technologies of Steriline is the Robotic vial filling machine (RVFM5). This machine was designed to fill and close vials in bulk by five filling and stoppering heads. Unlike traditional vial fillers, RVFM5 is equipped with 3 robotics arms that move the vials under each station and provide advantages such as improved flexibility in glassware management, higher safety in product handling (which protects both drug and personnel), and enhanced quality of the process which is not affected by human errors and contamination, mentions the company.

“Thanks to the robotic application, we are able to meet the increasing demand for more flexible solutions which guarantee easy and fast change formats in order to increase the range of vials on the same machine. It also reduces waste materials thanks to the zero-loss philosophy which means that instead of rejecting the incorrect filled or capped vials, the robotics arms can manipulate the containers to correct the error,” states Pontieri.

Romaco Tecpharm has introduced the TPR Optima tablet coater. “Thanks to a very high level of automation, it not only ensures a better use of resources - among other things, up to 50 percent less coating medium is required - it also prevents faults and defects in the products by minimizing manual process intervention and providing optimized monitoring of all coating parameters as well as their automatic adjustment where necessary,” reveals Pieper. “This creates the absolutely reproducible process with control over the quality of the products, the safety of the processes and the sustainability of the production.”

He continues that the process industry is inherently very energy intensive, so one of our priorities is to offer technologies that bring savings in this regard. Among our latest technological features is an energy recovery system using heat exchange, which is applied to our Romaco Tecpharm coaters and can save up to 50 percent on steam energy consumption. This makes the technology highly relevant not only in terms of resource conservation and reduction of carbon emissions, but even from the point of view of rising energy costs. Also contributing to this added value are the more efficient drying and the previously mentioned capability to automatically make parameter adjustments without interrupting the coating process, significantly reducing the overall process time.

Ima supplies next-generation complete robotic packaging lines like Tritone with close-to-zero manual operations. “This includes fully automated changeover operations, thus providing benefits to pharmaceutical companies such as a smaller footprint, reduced operating costs or improved production output, and less downtime, just to name a few. This technology has also been used in environments where it was necessary to eliminate human interaction,” opines Fricke.

He goes on to say that in the Injecta sterile fill-finish line, indeed, robots contribute to set-up manoeuvres in order to avoid two issues: damage to the product and danger to the operator. At the heart of the Group’s development plans, digital innovation is a strategy which is growing. From a green transition perspective, Ima’s digital services offer a clear advantage in terms of time and cost efficiency, with a lower impact on the environment as well.

“Our attention to the environment also involves the optimization of manufacturing processes. In fact, there have been significant developments in containment technology for capsule filling, reducing the use of disposables - often in plastic - and of water, thus generating significant energy savings and economic benefits,” elaborates Fricke.

Hurdles in the pharma sector

Pharma equipment suppliers also face challenges while keeping up with the latest trends of the industry, “I see two main challenges here for suppliers of pharmaceutical equipment: On the one hand, sustainable solutions require a willingness to invest, because they are often linked to technological innovations,” mentions Pieper. “The second challenge for machinery solution providers is that, especially in the pharmaceutical sector, quality and safety remain elementary constants that must not be compromised by sustainability objectives. This means that these two aspects must always be taken into account when developing sustainable solutions. Ideally, the approaches even improve the quality of pharmaceutical products and the safety of processes.”

Pontieri shares, “One of the biggest challenges is the combination of sustainability and higher level of automation. Usually, automation and technologies are typically energy-intensive, in contrast with sustainability. To overcome this challenge, Steriline decided that each of its machines should be highly energy efficient. Another challenge is the capability to minimize any waste of utilities (water), products and containers. To minimize the water consumption during production, the company implemented new technologies in its washer machine and also incorporated the ‘zero losses’ philosophy in its robotic machines as mentioned earlier.” With this, the firm was able to create an advantage for itself in terms of sustainability.

Towards a green future

With the pharma industry determined to use sustainable solutions in its production line, solution providers are leaving no stone unturned to develop the most green and efficient solutions in the market today. After all, a green future can only be achieved if all the stakeholders involved work together simultaneously as one whole unit.

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