Supply-Chain-as-a-Service for Specialty Pharmaceuticals
Interview with Christoph Staub, CEO of Allpack Group AG
While mass-produced medications such as over-the-counter pain relievers are manufactured and distributed in the millions, the business of orphan drugs for rare diseases is significantly more complex: This also applies to the packaging, labeling, and distribution, which the Swiss Allpack Group AG, part of the family-run Rhenopharma Group, specializes in. CEO Christoph Staub spoke with Wirtschaftsforum about the unique challenges of his business field.
Wirtschaftsforum: For decades, the Allpack Group AG has been passionate about pharmaceutical packaging – at what point exactly do you support your customers in this process?
Christoph Staub: Among contract packaging service providers, we occupy a very specific niche with our focus on orphan drugs for rare diseases: The corresponding drugs are only produced in manageable quantities, but these small volumes need to be distributed across virtually all countries – this leads to an even greater fragmentation of an already rather small individual order volume, which traditional packaging providers with their highly automated production lines do not want to handle in this form.
Wirtschaftsforum: How do your production processes differ from those used in the packaging of large-volume bulk medicines?
Christoph Staub: Whether packaging the final value-added step, whether processing a multimillion batch or a small run of 20 preparations, the processes involved are largely identical. The packaging looks the same, and there are no differences in quality requirements, which is why I sometimes get asked by the industry why one must select a different partner for Orphan Drugs. However, the actual implementation is completely different and is highly labor-intensive, simply because comprehensive automation would be uneconomical due to the small batches. Whether dealing with Oral Solid Dosages in capsule or tablet form or with liquid products for injectables or syrup, which we receive from our clients in pre-filled vials or bottles, we handle the entire process from labeling through to the actual packaging all the way to the finished pallet.
Wirtschaftsforum: How can such a finely detailed production be implemented economically and sustainably without major scale effects through automation in Switzerland, a country with high wages?
Christoph Staub: Offering this labor-intensive process in a way that is competitive internationally is indeed sometimes like squaring the circle. However, we have designed our entire organizational structure around this approach: While the planning horizons at other packaging service providers often extend to weeks or even months, ours are always firmly planned for just the next five days – this allows us to meet customer and market requirements with ultra-fast response times, and robust agility and flexibility. At the same time, our customers are closely integrated into our production through comprehensively automated digital solutions, allowing them to always track the current status of their orders – almost as if we were not an external partner, but located in-house at the client's own site. Along with our two sister companies in the Rhenopharma Group, we can cover the entire spectrum of a Supply-Chain-as-a-Service provider.
Wirtschaftsforum: What innovations are you currently particularly focused on?
Christoph Staub: About a year and a half ago, we further developed our late-stage customization so that we now label products at the latest possible time: The individual blisters are produced completely neutral to customer and country, and only identified by a lot number. This allows us to rely on certain economies of scale in the individual preliminary stages and to respond even faster to market orders. At the same time, we are now addressing the general problem of counterfeiting in the pharmaceutical market by incorporating elements hidden in the artwork, which can be read throughout the entire distribution chain via smartphone, verifying when and where the respective product was exactly manufactured.
Sustainability is also becoming an important issue for us as well as for our customers, which is why we are currently developing various mono films made of recyclable material together with several partners, aiming to eliminate the use of PVC and aluminium. It should not be much longer until these are market-ready. To close the gap between the prescriber and the patient even more comprehensively, packaging material will also increasingly function as an essential carrier of information in the future, potentially supporting therapy adherence or the effectiveness of the treatment. For some Asian countries, for example, no physical leaflet is provided anymore: instead, a QR code is placed on the packaging, through which the information is made available to the patient digitally.