The Indian Institute of Packaging (IIP) has selected Wockhardt Limited for its prestigious Indiastar award for innovative anti-spurious packaging. Wockhardt won the award for introducing a special holographic blister pack for Spasmo-Proxyvon capsules to fight menace of the counterfeit product packs.

"Large-scale counterfeiting of Spasmo-Proxyvon capsule packs, one of our leading brands, was directly hurting the consumers as well as the company," said Habil Khorakiwala, Chairman, Wockhardt Limited. "The availability of duplicate product packs in the market has dropped significantly after the introduction of holographic blister packs."

Hologram is a new concept in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. Wockhardt's hologram is not the usual sticker hologram. It is part of the foil and cannot be peeled off or removed. It took seven months for Wockhardt's packaging team to perfect the process.

Wockhardt's high volume pain management brand Spasmo-Proxyvon capsule blister pack entry was selected for the Indiastar award from among 143 product packs entries representing all industries. Indiastar is the national award for excellence in packaging, and is given for innovative and creative designs.

Winning the Indiastar award makes Wockhardt eligible to contest for the Asiastar and Worldstar awards organized by the Asian Packaging Federation and the World Packaging Organisation respectively.

To fight the menace of spurious packs, Wockhardt has been developing product packs with technology barriers like the specailised holograms to check the duplication of products such as for Proxyvon, Zedex, Decdan and Practin besides Spasmo-Proxyvon. The company's packaging innovation complements the efforts of Indian Pharmaceutical Alliance (IPA), an association of leading Indian pharmaceutical companies including Wockhardt, which has been at the forefront of creating awareness among people as well as law enforcement agencies on the problems posed by counterfeit medicines.

IIP is the apex body set up by the Government of India and the industries in 1996 for promotion of packaging standards in the country. It is the only national institutional of packaging representing India at Asian Packaging federation (APF) and World Packaging Organization (WPO).