Giving Production A Powerful Boost Through Digital Inline Printing

By James MacKenzie

CDMO Recipharm most recently reported revenues of around 1.1 billion euros, generated by almost 9,000 employees in 30 production facilities across ten countries. From tablets, capsules and inhalation drug devices to other pharmaceutical goods, its comprehensive services cover the entire life cycle of a product. Recipharm consistently strives to get products to market in a time- and cost-efficient way.

Its plant in Pianezza near Turin, which among other things produces more than 100 million blisters a year. In order to achieve high overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) despite the enormous number of SKUs and fluctuating batch sizes, Recipharm relies on digital inline printing technology. They were looking for a solution that would allow them to print all of the world’s languages, including Chinese with its complicated characters. Previous printing systems only delivered a low resolution and, to achieve an acceptable quality, required long setup times and relatively large quantities of aluminum foil.

Thanks to the adopted Hapa WebJet solution, the plant in Pianezza has reduced aluminum foil consumption by 30 percent and downtimes by 20 percent.