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China's Packaging Industry Luring Indian
Companies
Indian Pharma Industry Keen On Innovative Packaging
CHINA'S packaging industry is a key market for India to
access quality good at lower costs. Novel concepts and cost efficiency are
driving many of the Indian companies to the Dragon Land.
At the Interphex China 2012 concurrently held with API Spring
and PharmChina events at Hefei, there was a dedicated zone for global pharma
packaging majors from the Republic of China. There was a beeline of customers
from Indian pharma companies to look at the new products.
There was also a huge demand for single dose easy to use,
tamper proof and environment friendly packaging solutions. These are some of the
emerging trends for the pharma, personal care, dietary supplements and
nutraceuticals, said an official from Yili Capsule.
Companies in China are also working to ensure that the latest
technology is adopted as this would have a tremendous impact in the tapping
customers, said a section of officials from the packaging and printing industry.
India, being a major exporter to the regulated markets, needs
high quality packaging.
Though China's pharmaceutical packaging machinery, has
experienced rapid development in recent years, it needs further improvement.
From the point of view of developed countries, there is still a considerable gap
in areas such as innovation capability, low degree of integration of production,
the rapid development of industry from the pharmaceutical industry production.
With the stringent norms for national drug GMP certification,
GMP requirements on pharmaceutical packaging, equipment is now being more
strictly regulated. In order to meet the GMP production process requirements,
the use of the material has been greatly improved. In addition, because the
development of electronic information technology, intelligent production efforts
are needed.
In order to meet the needs of the pharmaceutical market, the
packaging machinery in China has to strengthen research and development and also
innovative designs. It is essential to have innovative ideas in research and
development of new products, to train multi-disciplinary talents, and also to
have close contact with manufacturers, opines an industry expert.
China is the second-largest packaging market in the world.
Fuelled by the rapid growth in domestic consumption and consistent growth in
GDP, the Chinese packaging industry has grown steadily and achieved rapid growth
in its key categories. China has replaced japan in terms of market size and is
expected to surpass the US by 2020. The Chinese packaging industry's key
end-user markets, including pharmaceuticals, retail and food and beverages, are
poised for impressive growth in the forecast period.
At the same time India has become the sixth-largest packaging
market in the world, with sales of US$24.6 billion in 2011. India is one of the
fastest-growing packaging markets in the world's fourth - largest packaging
market by 2016 with revenues of US$43.7 billion in 2016. Food safety laws in
India are still in their development stage, and will require further amendment
to meet the rapidly-changing needs of the packaging industry.
Flexible plastic packaging is the fastest growing packaging
category in India. The packaging industry benefited from strong growth in the
Indian retail market. Other end-user markets from packaging, including
pharmaceutical and processed food, have been growing rapidly, both domestically
and internationally. This demand from end-user markets is expected to remain
high. India's retail growth and increased consumption of consumer products is
driving the demand for packaging in the country.
India's per capita annual packaging expenditure was US$20 in
2011, which is significantly lower than the top 20 market average of US$347.6.
The low per capita expenditure offers a huge business opportunity for packaging
companies. Despite the Indian packaging industry undergoing some consolidation,
it is still fragmented, especially following the introduction of new companies
in the country.
In general, the pharma industry in India has always been on
the lookout for innovative packaging in terms of convenience, customer
friendliness and more importantly hygiene and compatibility with the products.
in view of these aspects, there have been enormous developments in packaging
especially to restrict counterfeiting.
(Ref : June 7, 2012, The Chronical Pharmabiz).
TI
India Wolverine Allows Design Of Feature-rich Medical Devices
Texas Instruments (TI) India is working on feature-rich and programmable devices
that will help customization at a fast pace. Its Wolverine platform is the
latest in low power which combines FRAM (ferroelectric random access memory), a
new universal memory type with a new 130 nanometer ultra-low leakage (ULL)
process technology and advanced MSP430 DNA. The first devices
based on this platform will be the MSP430FR58xx microcontroller series with
expected availability in third quarter of 2012. Semiconductors
play a pivotal role in revolutionizing the medical electronics market. “We have
seen semiconductors change the paradigm in the area of communications. The
‘Wolverine’ low-power architecture from TI is setting a new industry standard
and will enable a proliferation of ultra-low-power products. Engineers from TI
India have a significant role in design and development of many innovative
applications in medical products,” Shailesh Thakurdesai, business development
manager, Microcontrollers, Texas Instruments India told Pharmabiz.
The company is providing a broad portfolio of ultra low-power microcontrollers (MCUs)
to address memory, peripheral and packaging configuration needs. These cover
Value Line MSP430 MCUs, Stellaris Cortex-M MCUs real-time control C2000 MCUs,
and Hercules safety MCUs. Key trends in the medical
electronics market are miniaturization, portability, and wireless functionality.
Wolverine with its FRAM memory and design architecture is strategically designed
to positively impact the key trends mentioned above. Further, these imply a need
for longer battery life - a core Wolverine Ultra Low Power advantage.
In the case of glucose meters Wolverine increases the battery life by 10-20
years of battery longevity, and this trend is trickling into a myriad of other
medical applications. Wolverine is highly integrated and the
FRAM as a universal memory can be partitioned to handle the customer’s
application, wireless stacks and data collection in a flexible yet secure way,
thus positively impacting the miniaturization and wireless vectors, he said.
Designers can accelerate time to market by tapping into TI’s complete software
and hardware tools, extensive third-party offerings and technical support.
The company sees an important growth opportunity in the medical electronics
market and is gearing up to increase opportunities for the innovation of medical
electronics and helping shape technology to improve the quality and
accessibility of healthcare. Home, clinical, and imaging
end-equipment segments require increased and more advanced component support, as
technologies for medical applications continue to evolve. Compared to the
overall industrial market, the medical electronics market is small, but
attractive and growing. (Ref: The Chronicle Pharmabiz Dated
May 31, 2012) |
