Berry, a leader in the design, development, and production of patient-centred healthcare solutions, will begin production at its new manufacturing facility and healthcare centre of excellence in Bangalore, India as early as April 2023. The Greenfield expansion project will create local jobs and improve global access to health products.
Leveraging the company’s innovative research and development (R&D) solutions, this new Greenfield expansion project will improve regional and global access to advanced healthcare solutions, provide customers with necessary volume to support the forecasted growth for Asia’s domestic healthcare market, and boost India’s domestic economy by employing more than 500 new team members over the next eight years in Bangalore, commonly referred to as India’s Silicon Valley, the company said in a media statement.
The new Bangalore plant will improve global patient access to products for the inhalation, nasal, ophthalmic, dispensing, and self-injection industries. And the new Berry Global Healthcare R&D centre of excellence will support the development of innovative solutions for existing and new applications to improve medicine administration and functionality, while helping customers’ meet ambitious sustainability goals.
The R&D centre will be launching up to seven new products and projects in 2023 ranging from DPI Inhalers to plastics caps and closures. Included among these products will be Berry’s Pneumohaler, a lightweight, breath-actuated, multidose inhaler dose counter for the control and treatment of Asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Several new medical packaging products will be available for sampling with industrial prototypes in March 2023.
Located in close proximity to some of the largest, generic pharmaceutical companies, the Bangalore site’s ability to cater pharmaceutical packaging to US regulatory requirements will enable the local manufacture of healthcare products, at a global scale. The site will use ISO class clean rooms, as well as leverage Berry’s experience submitting Active Drug Master Files (DMFs) to regulatory agencies, and providing active DMF and filling for regulated markets.
Berry’s new Bangalore site will source the equivalent of around 90 per cent of the facility’s electricity from solar and wind power. The site has also achieved the International Sustainability and Carbon Certificate (ISCC) Plus designation. ISCC Plus certified facilities support customer demand for more sustainable packaging by ensuring materials meet the ISCC’s standards for recycled, renewable, and recycled-renewable materials. This provides traceability along the supply chain and verifies certified companies meet high environmental and social standards.
The new Bangalore site will follow the same relentless pursuit of safety as Berry’s initial Bangalore facility, which has operated with zero safety incidents for more than fourteen years. This commitment to maintaining high safety standards will contribute to achieving Berry’s ultimate safety goal of zero incidents of any type across its 265+ global locations and nearly 46,000 employees.
Several products developed at the Bangalore site will be available for sampling at the 2023 Pharmapack Paris exhibition. These products will include Berry’s innovative, patient-centric packaging and dispensing solutions, as well drug delivery devices for medicines and pharmaceuticals that meet the growing demand for sustainability and digitalisation. Among these products will be Berry’s Activated Rispharm (with a Risdrop nozzle), a recyclable, multidose antimicrobial dropper that helps prevent eye microbial infections and produces 16X less waste than a unidose dropper. Activated Rispharm has received a gold rating for functionality from CPHI China.
“Healthcare companies have limited access to regional expertise and global capabilities needed to provide patient populations in Asia with modern healthcare solutions at scale. Our new facility and global healthcare centre of excellence in Bangalore will support Asia’s growing demand for healthcare products, create new jobs, and, most importantly, benefit the lives of patient populations who have historically gone untreated and underdiagnosed,” Tom Salmon, Berry Global’s chairman and CEO, said.
“Improved drug affordability and greater access to modern healthcare solutions are more important than ever in India, one of the most populated countries in the world. Our new facility and R&D centre will benefit the domestic economy by creating new jobs and the regional economy overall by improving healthcare access and providing locally manufactured products,” Jean-Marc Galvez, president of consumer packaging international, said.