In January we welcomed visitors to our booth at Pharmapack in Paris, where we showcased our portfolio of paperboard packaging solutions designed to meet today’s pharmaceutical, medtech, and wound care industry needs.

We had a busy two days talking to existing and potential customers about their healthcare packaging challenges and the key industry trends and developments they are seeing.

A focus on safety & security

From safeguarding the integrity of medication to ensuring child safety, we know that pharmaceutical packaging plays a critical role in ensuring patient safety every step of the way. So, it’s no wonder healthcare businesses and packaging manufacturers are collaborating to leverage technologies like smart packaging, serialization, and tamper-evident designs to enhance security and transparency throughout the supply chain.

Though safety remains a top priority, we saw significant interest from businesses that are also actively seeking to reduce plastic in their packaging portfolios. Facing a complex balancing act, the challenge here is doing so, while still retaining all the essential security features that are crucial for both prescription and over-the-counter medications.

Another key topic for visitors (and one we expect to see continued growth in over the coming years), is self-administration solutions. These intelligent combination products may pose a challenge for packaging due to drug stability, sterility, and integration concerns, calling for advanced material selection, barrier technologies, and assembly processes.

This trend requires not just technical expertise and advanced packaging engineering, but a deep understanding of patient needs. Only then can we ensure these solutions are accessible, user-friendly, and truly transformative.

Broad capabilities, new markets

What was fascinating this year was the growth in the number of visitors to the show from the beauty sector – not a traditional target market for healthcare-focused solutions. However, the beauty industry is seeing growing demand for nutritional products that provide health and wellbeing benefits – sometimes referred to as ‘beautrition’. Beauty brands are now looking to healthcare for support as they move closer to the more highly regulated medical and pharmaceutical space.

This movement creates an exciting opportunity for collaboration between the beauty and healthcare sectors, with healthcare packaging specialists playing a vital role in bridging the gap and ensuring safe, effective, and attractive solutions for this emerging market.

Packaging Sustainability

It’s clear that sustainability is firmly on the agenda for the healthcare market. Patient demand for more sustainable packaging with less plastic, coupled with evolving regulation, is encouraging pharmaceutical and medical companies to rethink their packaging strategies.

Factors such as material reduction or substitution, designing for recyclability, and the use of recycled content can all assist with this objective with no compromise on patient safety or pack functionality.

As a partner of choice for many of the world’s leading healthcare companies, we offer advanced innovation capabilities to guide you through this complex and dynamic environment, ensuring your packaging solutions are future-proof to meet the required standards, without compromising on functionality or performance.