Stefan-Marc Schmidt Vice President, Marketing & Sales SCHOTT AG

SCHOTT, a specialty glass and materials company, is making a $1-billion investment through 2025 in its global pharmaceutical packaging business. Stefan-Marc Schmidt, Vice President, Marketing & Sales, SCHOTT, outlined the expansions at the DCAT Week ’19 Member Company Announcement Forum, which was held March 18, 2019 in New York.

He outlined that the expansions are due to several key industry trends: (1) increased drug spending in China and India; (2) rising market demand for ready-to-use (RTU) products; (3) higher market share for biologic-based drugs; and (4) increasing patient-safety requirements.

The new investments cover the entire value chain from pharmaceutical glass tubing to packaging through adjacent services. They include:

• A new glass tubing production facility in China as well as investments in additional tanks and infrastructure in India;
• Construction of a new production facility for the company’s Toppac ready-to-use polymer syringes and customized container solutions at its site in Müllheim, Germany and increased syringe production capacity at its facility in St. Gallen, Switzerland. Overall, the company’s production capacity for polymer packaging will increase by 50% by 2020 and an additional 50% over the next years;
• Expansion of the company’s high-value vial product line. This includes the production ramp-up for the company’s newly launched Everic pure vials for high-potent drugs, biologics and vaccines, and investment in the company’s iQ platform of ready-to-use vials. The ramp-up will occur at the company’s facility in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. The company will also double the capacity of lines producing coated vials in Germany.
• A greenfield facility for the production of syringes and a new production module for vials in India;
• Additional expansion of ampul production at the company’s recently inaugurated greenfield facility in China; and
• A strategic partnership with SmartSkin Technologies, a technology company based in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, which has developed and commercialized a pressure-sensitive skin technology for multiple applications.

Several of these investments will be completed early this year. Other projects such as a new melting tank and syringe greenfield production in India will be ramped up later in 2019. All other major investments will have an impact over the course of the next five to six years. By 2025, the company says it will have invested approximately $1 billion in its pharma business segments.