With the growing influence of internet in the world of communication, e-commerce as a business platform offers immense scope for the growth of packaging industry in India. As more and more innovations emerge in the packaging sector, particularly in the pharma, food and beverages sectors, the Indian packaging industry is slated to top $70 billion by 2020.
According to a recent report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Ficci), the Indian packaging industry constitutes about four to five per cent of the global packaging industry. The per capita packaging consumption in India is quite low at 4.3 kgs, compared to countries like Germany and Taiwan where it is 42 kgs and 19 kgs respectively. However, organized retail and boom in e-commerce offer huge potential for the future growth of the packaging sector.
Today, plastics are the material of choice in packaging for the sectors such as FMCG, food and beverages, pharmaceuticals etc. Globally, plastics comprise 42 per cent of packaging with the combination of rigid and flexible plastics in packaging. Plastics are used heavily for packaging due to innovative visual appeal for customer attraction and convenience. Additionally, they improve the hygiene quotient and shelf-life of the products especially in food and beverages segment. “As plastics possess versatile properties it can help us do more with less. One such property is light weight. As plastics are light in weight, they have a high product to package ratio which results in lighter weighed end product. For example, only 1.5 pounds of flexible plastics can deliver approximately 60 pounds of beverage; compared to three pounds of aluminum or 50 pounds of glass,” said the Ficci-TSMG report.
At present the size of Indian packaging industry is somewhere around $ 30-35 billion as per statistics available for the year 2015-16, however the industry is expected to grow anywhere between 18-25 per cent in the next five years.
Particularly, the plastic packaging segment is growing at an enormous rate as it is having unmatchable advantages over aluminum or glass packaging both in terms of energy consumption, cost and bulkiness.
“Despite environment concerns over the use of plastics, given the immense advantages plastic has in ease of shipping, lower cost of packaging material and less fuel consumptions, the plastic packaging is going to stay for long,” opined AVS Chakravarthi, Managing Director of Ecobliss India.
Unlike other packaging materials, plastics also have another advantage recycling and reuse. Plastics, which have low energy requirements during production, consume about 25 per cent less energy in production compared to other alternatives. This results in lower emission of CO2 gas. Thus, when compared to glass or aluminum, plastics results in lighter environmental footprint.
According to the Ficci-TSMG report, India is a growing market for plastics and consumes about 12.8 million metric tonnes (mmt) of plastics annually against global consumption of 285 mmt per year. The plastics and polymer consumption is growing at an average rate of 10 per cent. About 30,000 processing units with 113,000 processing machines have created a manufacturing capacity of 30 mmt per annum in India. This has been achieved with a 13 per cent CAGR of processing capacity during the last five years. The industry has invested $5 billion in machinery and is expected to invest $ 10 billion more for increasing the capacity during the next five years.
The per capita consumption of polymers in India during 2014-15 was just 10.5 kg as compared to 109 kg in USA, 45 kg in China and 32 kg in Brazil. “India is expected to be among the top 10 packaging consumers in the world by 2016. The low level of per capita plastics consumption in India is indicative of the massive growth potential of the plastic industry. Given the rising consumerism and modern lifestyles, it is expected that per capita consumption will be doubled in the next five years,” said the report.
New regulations thrust on innovations
The new safety regulations coming to force from time to time is giving more stress on the pharma industry to adopt innovative packaging methods. The regulators at the national and international levels are stressing on pharma companies to increasingly comply with child resistance packaging norms, while at the same time be user-friendly.
According to Chakravarthi, of late the regulators both at the domestic and international levels are increasingly demanding the pharma companies to comply with strict regulations with regard to child resistance and user friendly packaging. “It is mandatory for the pharma companies to follow scientific packaging methods. In addition to branding, the packaging models should also address the product needs, patient convenience and product security. Of late regulators are stressing more on child resistance and user- friendly packaging models,” says Chakravarthi.
Today the Indian pharma industry is grappling with several challenges including the effects of new product patents, drug price control, infrastructure development, regulatory reforms, quality management and conformance to global standards. With new regulations coming in, the industry must continuously incorporate them to be competitive internationally. The pharma manufacturers must abide by the regulatory requirements set by the US FDA, and the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), as well as national boards such as the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI). In particular, compliance with the regulations dealing with the migration of contaminants from packaging to contents should be a major focus for India, opined Chakravarthi.
In the recent times, the Indian pharma companies have been facing a lot of resistance for their products for lack of proper packaging and for not complying with international packaging guidelines. Because of which, the US FDA and EU regulators have blocked imports for certain non compliance packages from India and had even blacklisted certain pharma companies banning imports from them. To address this many Indian companies have to re-look their product packaging lines and incorporate the missing aspects to full fill the regulatory compliance.
“While packaging has to protect the product integrity, it also must help the patient safety. Child resistant and tamper evident packs will be in major demand as they protect children against incidental and accidental poisoning,” said the MD. Stressing on new developments in pharma packaging, Chakravarthi viewed that single-dose formats are capturing sizeable market and this trend will increase. The challenge is to keep the pack as compact, yet inform users as clearly as possible about whatever information they need. With the surge of temperature sensitive drugs, packaging companies al so need to address cool chain packaging solutions in the secondary and tertiary packaging models.
In the coming days combination products also called as combo drug packs will see more acceptance and it's a challenge for packaging developer to offer a solution for packing heterogeneous products yet following compliance requirements. With self-administered therapies to increase in the future, the pharma companies should provide injectable drugs and prefilled syringes with accurate dosage.
So the packaging must ensure dosing accuracy, tamper evident, follow compliance and at the same time it also must help prevent drug spray-back and more importantly help prevent accidental injuries due to needle sticks. So keeping all these developments, packaging firms needs to upgrade their packaging lines be prepared to meet the future demands, viewed the MD.
Recently, Chakravarthi took part in an international conference on packaging in Budapest in Hungary as a special invitee from India to speak on innovations in packaging sector. The conference focused on ‘Innovations in Pharmaceutical Packaging in Changing World’. “Today the world recognizes India’s emergence in all segments. Particularly in pharma packaging and machinery, India’s emergence has been acknowledged by the global community. The current trend is the rise of tamper proof, child resistant and senior friendly packaging and it is the order of the day,” said Chakravarthi.
Speaking about spurious drugs and ways to handle it, Chakravarthi said, "Counterfeit drugs have become a big threat than drug mafia in pharmaceuticals. There is no country in the world that can claim that it's totally free of any counterfeit medicines. Powerful legislations, rigorous punishments must be enforced to combat counterfeiting. At the same time latest developments in the industry like, advanced Track and Trace systems, serialisation and non-copyable security features can help significantly to counter spurious drugs.”
Citing the fact that India accounts for 40 per cent of global generic drugs market, he feels there is great opportunity for pharmaceutical packaging industry as well. “The only answer to the counterfeit menace is to use advances in technology making it more difficult to copy,” he remarked.