Technological revolution strikes packaging and printing for pharma and F&B

By OEM Update Editorial February 29, 2020 6:07 pm

Better safety and efficiency standards in packaging and printing for the pharma and F&B sectors make way for companies to be on a par with global norms and standards.

Packaging and printing norms and technologies have undergone a drastic change in recent years, particularly for the pharma and F&B sectors. Historically, machine and human safety has been a second priority in Indian manufacturing. With globalisation, in recent years, we are seeing a positive change with a higher impetus on safety by machine builders and factories. Pharma and F&B are both highly regulated, and product and food safety is of utmost importance. It is essential for machines and factories to comply with these stringent regulations with usage of hygienic systems for automation. Ninad Deshpande, Head – Marketing & Corporate Communication, B&R Industrial Automation, explains, “Today, the norms for packaging safety in pharma or F&B sectors in India are on par with the global norms. Thus, we observe products manufactured and packaged in India and exported to other countries for consumption. On the other hand, machine and human safety in both pharma and F&B sectors have seen a positive change with machine builders demanding for safe operations in not only export machines but also machines supplied in India.”

3D printing on the rise

Among the many notable developments in printing, 3D printing has been one of the most widely discussed. As a revolutionary form of printing, it is not just a printing technology, but more of a manufacturing technique that has far-reaching applications and is helping the pharma and F&B sectors in design innovations. Deshpande says, “Additive manufacturing is no longer limited to automobile and metal industries. F&B and pharma are quick to utilise 3D printed food items for consumption. This has led to individualisation and providing the perfect mix for a specific person. As the instructions are digitally fed to the 3D printer, the food can be prepared based on an individual taste or linking. Thus, any 3D printer can determine without any hard work the exact quantity of vitamins, carbohydrates or fats based on inputs. In addition, this drastically reduces waste and costs providing higher food sustainability. Similar is the case with pharma and medicines. A medicine can be prepared based on individualistic needs.”

Touted as one of the key pillars of Industry 4.0, 3D printing technology is now an essential part of progressive business solutions and processes. It is where IT merges with manufacturing, culminating in digital manufacturing. In the F&B sector, 3D printing has revolutionised food innovation and production through creativity ways and customisation. William Lee, Channel Sales Director, Asia Pacific, Ultimaker, mentions a collaboration with an F&B conglomerate wherein the team set up a 3D printing lab in Seville and set goals to improve the manufacturing process in terms of output, uptime, and safety. One of them is the safety latches which are used during machine maintenance. These latches will be locked when machines stop to prevent anyone from accidentally starting a machine while someone is doing maintenance. Within the first phase of 3D printing, the client saw a reduction in costs and delivery time by 70-90 percent.

He adds, “Schubert is another partner that has leveraged Ultimaker’s 3D printers to enhance its manufacturing processes. It creates new tools to enable the machines to handle different products. For example, a machine that packages chocolate rabbits for Easter will also be able to package chocolate Santa Clauses during the Christmas holiday season. When a customer wants to produce a new product, they can simply send it to Schubert, which then develops the right tools and programming needed for the machine to handle it. In the pharmaceutical realm, researchers at Cardiff University now 3D print microfluidic devices which they use in their studies with Ultimaker printers.”

Many of the printed parts must be able to endure stress, high temperatures, moisture, or numerous impacts over a long period of time. Keeping these criteria in mind, the conglomerate uses a variety of Ultimaker materials such as Tough PLA, Nylon, and semi-flexible material TPU 95A. These materials have excellent mechanical properties to withstand the wear and tear of the manufacturing line. Tough PLA is often used for pushers and tools, while Nylon is used for parts that need to function with metal parts. TPU 95A’s flexibility is ideal for bumpers and protective parts. Recognising that there are always new materials that are being introduced in the market, Ultimaker saw a need to plug the gaps with new launches such as Ultimaker S5 Material Station and Ultimaker S5 Air Manager. The Material Station helps push the Ultimaker S5 to a new level of productivity and consistency. It boosts and simplifies the 3D printing workflow, while delivering a more efficient, utterly reliable solution for material handling and storage. The Ultimaker S5 Material Station allows users to load Ultimaker spools in any bay, in any order. It fits 6 spools and allows users to make endless material combinations.

He adds, “The Air Manager is fully integrated into the Materials’ Print Profiles. Air suction is completely controlled, ensuring the right chamber temperature. It fully encloses the build chamber to create an inside-out airflow and filters up to 95 percent of all ultrafine particles (UFPs). This integrated solution results in higher print qualities and a safer work environment offering peace of mind when printing with an extended range of materials.”

Hurdles in packaging and printing for pharma and F&B

One of the key challenges faced by the packaging and printing companies is to keep pace with the ever-changing consumption pattern of the aspirational Indian consumers. They need to keep experimenting and come up with products scoring high on shelf life, variety, convenience, and health, says Sameer Gandhi, Managing Director, Omron Automation, India. He adds, “This necessitates producers to introduce multiple SKUs at a short notice while at the same time meeting the demand for quality and health. It further implies setting up of high-speed machines and flexible end-of-line solutions as well as warehouses. Investment in automation technologies like robotics, vision for quality inspection and traceability can help the producers overcome these challenges.”

Another notable challenge is the trend towards environment-friendly packaging and regulatory pressure. Manufacturers are now facing challenges to follow the new packaging regulations announced by the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) in 2019 that replaced the 2011 provisions. Gandhi explains, “The new regulations enlist the new migration limits for plastic packaging materials, ban on recycled plastics and newspaper used for food packaging and revisions in the labelling regulations. This requires machine modifications to enable them to handle new packaging materials. Again, developments in automation are keeping abreast with these changes. For example, sealing is a significant challenge with the new packaging materials; however, we’re ready with the automation solutions to enable better control of the heaters to ensure perfect sealing.”

Lokesh Kaushal, Regional Segment Leader – Packaging Machinery, Asia Pacific, Rockwell Automation discusses some of the challenges in packaging and printing for the pharma and F&B sectors as follows:

• Movement towards eco-friendly/biodegradable packs, supported by statewide anti-plastic measures.
• Premium and personalised packaging for the affluent shopper.
• Clean labelling for health-conscious consumers that require legible ingredient and nutritional content.
• Food-grade ink that does not contain chemicals or preservatives.
• Single-instant-gratification packs for consumers “on the go”.
• Packs that emphasise mobility and rigidness for e-commerce and food delivery services.
• Increased demand for retailer private label and third-party manufacturing resulting in category pack standardisation.
• Constant innovation requiring packaging reinvention with accelerated new product introductions and shortened product life cycles.
• Increased demand for microwavable and reheatable containers, particularly among dual-income nuclear families with limited time that rely on home-delivery, take-out and Ready-to-Eat (RTE).
• Demand for extended shelf life requiring multiple packaging layers that increase overall raw material consumption.

He adds, “Manufacturers need to adopt a holistic approach while putting the production processes in place. It is not just about meeting the needs of today but having a futuristic vision to build sustainable growth. In order to mitigate these risks, many of our customers are looking for machines that provide maximum level of flexibility in terms of product mix and manufacturing capabilities.”

Equipment suppliers on the other side are moving towards building flexible equipment to handle multiple SKUs while reducing changeover times drastically. There are continuous efforts being put in to utilise biodegradable materials which are a cost-effective replacement to plastics.

Deshpande says, “As we head into personalised products, mass customisation and customisation for target markets has taken precedence. This makes the packaging and printing companies adapt to the changing demands of the industry. There are possibilities to produce products and packages in batches as done previously as well as with a new possibility of manufacturing them in batches on one. In a bottling line, which is capable of filling bottles of different sizes and liquid with minimum changeover time, the packaging or labelling systems need to be individualised based on the product being filled. B&R’s ACOPOStrak has been successfully deployed in such an environment, integrating the entire line right from bottling, filling, capping, and labelling for shorter batches.”

3D printing, too, has its own set of challenges. Lee states, “3D printing technology is already being applied to medical devices and surgical aids, particularly in research and development. Our Ultimaker S5 printer has received the Materialise certification, which certifies that our printer passes the compatibility test for FDA approved medical applications using the Materialise Mimics inPrint software. This ensures that the 3D printing workflow when used with Mimics inPrint reduces the safety and quality-control burden on doctors and hospitals. However, 3D printing is seeing some resistance in the pharmaceutical sector as there are naturally more concerns on regulations and safety issues. When it comes to 3D printing of food, speed is one that has yet to be overcome. Food printers often require cooling of ingredients by layer, before proceeding to print the next layer. This results in delay and maybe the freshness of the ingredients. While it is a novel idea, customers also need time to get used to the idea of consuming 3D printed food.”

Enhancing traceability of packaging and logistics

Technologies like barcoding and radio-frequency identification (RFID) are helping to enhance the traceability of packaging and logistics and making companies more responsible in terms of end-to-end supply chain management. Barcodes have been used widely in the past decade to help customers identify products and reduce counterfeiting for many years, says Kaushal. They can be used to store information about a product, i.e., inventory number, tracking ID, name, weight, cost, and more. 3D barcodes or more popularly known as QR codes are capable of storing hundreds of times more information than traditional codes. QR codes can connect users to many different types of data such as web pages, images, contact information, SMS text messages, and more. QR codes can be read by simply scanning them with a QR code reader app downloaded on a smartphone. Hence, they are becoming more popular in marketing as well as being used on machines as location markers.

Omni-ID comments, “A key point to make is that barcodes and RFID are complementary technologies. RFID and barcodes are part of the overall solution for enhancing the traceability of packaging and logistics. Barcodes are tremendously economic methods of identifying and counting assets where you have line of sight, a low data capture requirement, and the barcode can be read by a machine or a human. The other advantage of barcodes is that they make it much easier to pick out a single item from a batch. Passive radio frequency identification (RFID) involves labelling assets with an integrated circuit(s) and antenna (the device) and communicating over wireless frequencies between the device and a reader from near contact to 35–40m. Active RFID devices can communicate from 20m to more than 10 km using LPWAN technologies.”

The RFID market is generally divided into passive devices and active devices. Passive devices signal their location and identity to the reader. Active devices signal their location, identity and are also capable of transmitting information about their status, depending upon the sensors that are integrated into the device: telling the reader whether the asset is hot, cold, vibrating, still, or experiencing conditions that are out of line with normal parameters. Because they transmit data about the status of their environment, active RFID devices have a range of applications in manufacturing, cold food storage, logistics, geological and healthcare sectors, and are viewed as being an important part of the IoT.

Dr Kington adds, “Omni-ID pioneered passive RFID devices and launched its Sense range of IoT RFID devices in February 2020. However, we also provide customers with the option to use barcodes where this is more appropriate.”

RFID is more suitable for warehouse applications requiring a much larger range between the object and the reader (between 1m and 10m), where there is much more data to capture, and where there is less need to identify single items in a batch. RFID is also helpful for environments where the barcode might become obscured or unreadable owing to contaminants. Omni-ID is agnostic on standards, but committed to ultra-high frequency (UHF), which has a faster data transfer rate and longer read range than low-frequency (LF) or high-frequency (HF) and is a great match for industrial and logistic type applications. UHF RFID also offers the advantage of being able to track multiple items at once, such as items being loaded into a warehouse.

Barcoding offers automatic product identification, extremely fast recognition and implementation of data. Aaqyl Chagla, CEO, Rapid Delivery says, “Barcoding helps smooth co-ordination between companies involved in supply chain management. It also help companies to use their assets in a more efficient way and to achieve a competitive advantage through outcome received for better customisation and faster deliveries of ordered goods. Traceability has also improvised for aftermarket logistics. By using barcode-enabled technology such as handheld and wearable scanners, warehouse staff can pick, pack, locate, manoeuvre, store, and ship items more efficiently and effectively.”

Gandhi states, “Modern F&B/FMCG logistics chains are long and complex. A product may get housed in multiple warehouses and go through several stock points before it reaches the customer. By using barcodes printed on the package itself, we can track the movement of the product through various stages right up to the consumer. Thus, in case of any complaints from the end consumer, the product’s journey can be traced back to the production point. RFID helps in a similar way by tracking the movement of pallets within the shop floor and the warehouse.”

New materials and technologies to be the way forward

With changing consumer preferences and rising concerns for environment and sustainability, new techniques like aseptic packaging, retort packaging and biodegradable packaging are arising in the F&B sector mainly to ensure a longer shelf life of products, according to Gandhi. The pharma sector, while struggling with the lessening the use of plastics, is experimenting with ingenious techniques like dose monitoring and innovative mechanised blister packs, digital timers and alarms on pill bottles, etc.

Kaushal says that in order to control the waste on a global level, there is a massive movement to go towards more sustainable solutions. Some of the materials being researched on are as follows:

• Bioplastic: Cellulose; Starch-based: Biodegradable
• Change to metal, glass, carton: High and simpler recycling rate

Changing materials will also need to be adapted by existing packaging machinery, particularly in primary packaging. Likewise, where the alternatives are limited for biodegradable materials, stronger use of metal and glass will be adopted.

By using barcode-enabled technology such as handheld and wearable scanners, warehouse staff can pick, pack, locate, manoeuvre, store, and ship items more efficiently and effectively.

With many new such techniques and materials being seen in packaging and printing for pharma and F&B, companies are hopeful to see a booming business in these sectors in coming years.
Ninad Deshpande, Head – Marketing & Corporate Communication, B&R Industrial Automation

As we head into personalised products, mass customisation and customisation for target markets has taken precedence. This makes the packaging and printing companies adapt to the changing demands of the industry.
William Lee, Channel Sales Director, Asia Pacific, Ultimaker

3D printing technology is already being applied to medical devices and surgical aids, particularly in research and development.
Sameer Gandhi, Managing Director, Omron Automation, India

The new regulations enlist the new migration limits for plastic packaging materials, ban on recycled plastics and newspaper used for food packaging and revisions in the labelling regulations.
Lokesh Kaushal, Regional Segment Leader – Packaging Machinery, Asia Pacific, Rockwell Automation

With RFID technology, the supply chain can achieve high performance and tracking.
Dr Tony Kington, CEO, Omni-ID

RFID and barcodes are part of the overall solution for enhancing the traceability of packaging and logistics.
Aaqyl Chagla, CEO, Rapid Delivery