Rexam Pharma India, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Rexam group, is all set to offer advanced packaging solutions from India, thanks to the company's Technology Centre in Bangalore.
The company has set up a Technology Centre in Bangalore in its bid to support pharma companies with design and development expertise along with regulatory support in all packaging requirements.
"Our investment consisted of building a new 1000 sq meter clean room fully compliant of cGMP standard. This will allow Rexam to offer advanced packaging technologies from India. We will produce Rispharm Eye dropper range and the Argus Loc CRC closures. For this we have installed five new presses and a high speed automated line which will give an installed capacity of 300 million annually," said, Eric Soubeiran, business managing director, Rexam Pharma Packaging India, in an exclusive interview to Pharmabiz.
"Rexam is a worldwide expert in injection moulding, injection blow moulding, assembly, clean room manufacturing, which are carried out with stringent adherence to the regulatory compliances. This expertise is available at our Bangalore facility over the last three years. In 2008, the company chose Bangalore as a technology platform for Asia. We have therefore constituted a team of 10 experts in manufacturing, engineering and industrialisation to help our customers to develop complex packaging and especially multi component devices. Our other core competency area is to support our customers in all regulatory issues like US Pharmacopoeia's Performance Validation Tests and Drug Master File related to the filing of their New Drug Application," he added.
Asked about the company's rationale behind selecting India to launch such a project, Eric Soubeiran said: "We want to give the Indian pharmaceutical industry access to the latest packaging requirements for the regulated markets. That's why Rexam has invested in a compliant facility which will be able to cater to ophthalmology, solid dosage forms and medical devices. The company also wanted to introduce new technologies in India by localising the production of some of its leading products like Rispharm range and Argus Loc. We are convinced that the quality requirement for packaging in India will align to the worldwide standard. Hence we don't want to distinguish between its quality for domestic products and that for exports."
The Bangalore unit has 25 injection moulding and injection blow moulding machines with a range of 60 to 275 T and 15 to 85T, respectively. And it is expected to give the company a capacity of 200 million eyedroppers/ annum and 300 million caps per annum.
"The technology centre can help our customers at any phase: from concept stage, design, proto typing, industrialisation to manufacturing for all injection moulding, injection blow moulding and assembly," noted Eric Soubeiran.
Asked about the company's total strength in India he said: "We have around 100 employees. Training of manpower has always been the Rexam philosophy and in line with the same, the Indian operations has trained the temporary workforce and upgraded 50 per cent of the temporary workforce into permanent employment. This trend will continue alongside with our growth efforts."
Rexam Pharma is expected to replicate its business model and localise production where markets are large enough and leverage on the technology platform to develop complex drug delivery devices. "Our Bangalore facility has been designed to be flexible to expand quickly keeping the same industrial set-up," informed Eric Soubeiran.