Michelman India's water-based coating for blister packs

Michelman India is in the process of introducing its water-based coatings for blister packages for the pharma industry. The application, in its testing period, will replace the heat seal coating/resin used on the inner side of the blister pack.

13 Apr 2015 | By PrintWeek India

Yogesh Pitake, the technical services specialist at Michelman

This, according to Dr Mokashi, has been developed leveraging Michelman's expertise in developing water-based coatings for a wide range of applications.

Dr Mokashi said, "Our present project is to take away the polyethylene from one side and to eliminate the solvent-based coating from the blister packs. Competition for soft foil (poly to poly) grew from blister packaging. These blister packs constitute of a printed aluminium foil on the outer side, the inner side is coated by a heat seal coating or a resin, which is then sealed to PVC which have the cavities for the tablets.

The sealing layer of the blister packs is solvent-based. The evaporation of this solvent into the atmosphere is a major concern, especially for the European countries. Thus, the to shift to aqueous / water-based coatings."

Yogesh Pitake, the technical services specialist at Michelman, said, "The compounds have been identified and laboratory trials for the peeling test, storage test, migration test, humidity test, oxygen transmission, etc have been conducted. This data has to be collected and approved by the US FDA, and the European Union (EU), before being introduced in the pharma industry."

Is the pharma industry ready for this shift?

Pankaj Shah, co-director of Michelman India, said, "The pharma industry takes time to change and rightfully so. They do not want to change and fail and we want to be sure about our offering, too. The biggest challenge, is the resistance to change."

For a very long time, before the blister packaging gained popularity, two laminates were widely used; one, aluminium foil laminated to polyethylene, called as poly laminates, and the second was the aluminium foil coated with VMCH,

In case of the poly laminates, the composition of the pack is foil-poly poly-foil.

In January 2015, Michelman acquired its Indian sales and service partner, Supack International and has appointed Supack’s founder, Pankaj Shah as the co-director of Michelman India.