SCHOTT Pharmaceutical Systems, one of the world’s leading suppliers of glass tubing and primary packaging for the pharmaceutical industry, continues to expand its global network. The company will open up a new production plant in Russia this month and plans to further strengthen its position in Japan.
At the end of May 2011, the company will officially inaugurate a new manufacturing facility in Russia. Located in Zavolzhe, near the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, the new production site will employ around 60 employees initially and will produce premium quality ampoules and vials. All products will be manufactured according to cGMP guidelines (current Good Manufacturing Practices) and meet the high international standards for primary pharmaceutical packaging.
SCHOTT is the first international group, which manufactures primary pharmaceutical packaging made of glass, to open a production facility in Russia. With its packaging expertise and quality commitment, SCHOTT will support Russian pharmaceutical companies in meeting the requirements of ‘Pharma 2020’. The company has been selling ampoules, vials, cartridges and syringes to the Russian market since the beginning of the 1990s. So far, Russian customers have been mainly supplied from the existing pharmaceutical packaging site in Hungary.
Furthermore, SCHOTT formed a joint venture with Japanese company Naigai Glass Industry at the end of 2010 in order to strengthen its position in Japan, the world’s second largest pharmaceutical market. The new company, SCHOTT NAIGAI K.K., is based in Osaka, Japan, where Naigai has already been operating a production site for many years. Under the terms of the joint venture, Naigai shifted its existing vial manufacturing activities over to the new company and SCHOTT contributed its highly advanced automated inspection system (AIS), which is even more reliable than human eye inspection.
With new business operations in major growth markets such as China and Argentina, SCHOTT has already expanded its global network of pharmaceutical packaging production plants in recent years. With more than 600 production lines in 14 countries around the world, SCHOTT manufactures over seven billion syringes, vials, ampoules, cartridges and special products for the pharmaceutical industry each year.
“Our global production network allows us to be close to our customers who benefit from the high quality and technology standards,” says Dr Jürgen Sackhoff, executive vice president of SCHOTT Pharmaceutical Systems. “These global production capacities also allow for supply safety along the entire supply chain.”