Gerresheimer offers pharmaceutical and medical technology products of plastics and glass in its medical systems business unit. The strategy of the company to merge its competence for both materials under one roof is now also being expanded to the development and industrialisation areas.
The Technical Competence Center (TCC) in Wackersdorf was previously responsible for the development and industrialisation of products made of plastics. Innovative glass products such as pre-fillable syringes and cartridges will also be prepared for series production here in the future.
The establishment of glass competence in the TCC will expand the technology portfolio at the Wackersdorf location. The TCC bundles all areas required for the technical and process organisation realisation of products. Twenty-five new jobs will be created by 2020 for this purpose.
One focus of the expansion is the establishing of small batch production for pre-fillable glass syringes and cartridges. Here, it is possible to produce pre-series modules from glass-forming to ready-to-ship, washed, and siliconised ready-to-fill systems. The focus is on syringes and cartridges for especially sophisticated, biotechnologically manufactured medication, clinical samples for approval, or prototypes for process and technology development.
At the same time, glass competence is also being established in the automation systems area (special machine engineering) to develop innovative technologies for glass forming and automation.
New generations of glass forming lines for syringe production will in future originate in a cooperation between the Bünde and Wackersdorf locations.
Global executive vice-president of Gerresheimer Medical Systems management board Manfred Baumann said: “In addition to the expansion of the technology portfolio, the expansion of small batch production and automation systems in Wackersdorf, we should also focus on large batch production at our location in Bünde, which previously had to be interrupted at considerable expense and effort for development projects and start-ups for new products.”