Post Consolidation, Rexam Healthcare Looks Ahead to Bright Future

Rexam did not have a good year in 2009. The supplier of cans to Coca Cola and Pepsi announced a pretax loss of £59 million in the year to 31 December after exceptional costs. While its speciality cans operations will continue to face a tough economic environment, the group’s healthcare packaging division is more upbeat. At least that was my impression a couple of weeks ago when I ventured to the other side of Paris’s Boulevard Périphérique to visit Rexam’s offices in Suresnes for an interview with Global Marketing Director Patrice Lewko.

Consolidation of the company’s three healthcare packaging businesses—Rexam Pharma, Primary Packaging and Prescription—and the establishment of technical centres in Europe, the United States and, most recently, India are milestones that bode well for the company, according to Lewko. “We brought together our technical staff in technical centres near Lyon in La Verpillière to develop devices, and in Perrysburg, Ohio, in the United States to work on innovative closures and containers. That has worked out very well,” says Lewko. “The establishment of a single healthcare group lets us offer customer support across the board in terms of technology. Meanwhile, our global reach and local presence allow us to fulfil customer needs at all levels.”

The company’s newest technical centre is in Bangalore. It is a “high-end operation,” says Lewko, which may go against conventional wisdom. The company had been shipping closures and bottles to India from Europe and the United States, where they would be processed by customers and then shipped back to Europe or to the United States. “It just made no sense to continue doing that,” says Lewko. “Now we have a GMP-compliant facility with an ISO Class 8 cleanroom in India that can do the whole operation.” India’s indigenous healthcare market is evolving quite rapidly, he adds. “We are involved with a good number of domestic manufacturers and we are seeing a growing demand for more sophisticated products including devices.”

Back on the home front, the company continues to do R&D work on drug delivery devices. It is developing new nasal spray pumps, a new valve platform for metered dose inhalers, preservative-free multidose droppers, safety devices for prefilled syringes and multilayer technology for containers.

Tags: healthcare packaging, Rexam, Rexam Pharma