There are more kinds of plastic materials for pharmaceutical packaging, including PVC, PE, PP, PS, PET, nylon, etc. Among them, PE, PP and PET account for the largest proportion and PVC consumption is decreasing.

The main form of plastic medicine packaging.

 

Plastic-aluminium composite bags, multi-layer plastic composite bags, blister-eye blister packaging, all kinds of medicine bottles and infusion bottles are the main forms of drug packaging. Blister eye blister packaging is becoming the most important packaging method for solid medicines. PP, PE and PET bottles are used in solid and liquid medicines.

 

Liquid medicine packaging

 

Liquid drugs are mainly divided into injection, infusion and oral liquid. Liquid medicine mainly consists of two packaging forms: bottle and bag.

 

Plastic materials are slow in packaging. Although it is generally believed that plastic bottles will replace ampoules as the main form of injection in the future, drug administrations around the world are more cautious in their management of plastics because of concerns that the components filtered from plastics may contaminate the products.

 

On the contrary, plastic packaging is making breakthrough progress in large infusion drugs. According to incomplete statistics, there are about 200 transfusion enterprises that have passed GMP certification in China, and the transfusion production capacity is about 3 billion bottles. There are more than 100 enterprises with annual production capacity exceeding 10 million bottles. Some of the large infusion drug manufacturers, including Shuanghe Pharmaceutical Industry and Tianjin Dazhong, are using plastic bottles or bags to make large infusion packaging.

 

Although glass bottles still account for more than 80% of the total infusion packaging in China, this situation is changing with the rapid development of polyolefin plastic bags and BOPP bottles in this field. In particular, BOPP bottles, because of the domestic production of equipment, with high output, low unit cost of products and other advantages, are rapidly popularized in large domestic infusion production enterprises. Because BOPP bottles cannot be cleaned twice, they must be manufactured in GMP-certified factories, and the storage conditions should also meet GMP requirements. Many polyolefin infusion bag production lines have been introduced in China, but because polyolefin raw materials can not be produced in China, resulting in higher costs, there are some difficulties in market development, and the use of PVC bags will gradually shrink.

 

Soft plastic bottles have been partly applied to oral liquids, and their applications are gradually expanding. Rigid plastic bottles are also slowly replacing glass for packaging larger volumes of liquid drugs such as syrup, which is in line with European developments. The main reason is that plastic containers often have wider bottlenecks, easier filling, faster production process on the filling line, not easy to break, and can provide a larger label area to carry more information.

 

The biggest disadvantage of plastics in liquid packaging is that the shelf life of medicines will be shortened when plastic bottles are replaced from glass. The barrier performance of the single layer plastic container is limited, and the composite plastic container is also restricted by the price factors. A compromise currently adopted in Europe is the addition of plastic shrink sleeves on glass bottles.

 

Packaging of solid drugs for liquid medicine packaging bottles

 

Solid medicines, including tablets, granules and powders. Plastic bags, plastic bottles and blister packaging are the main packaging forms.

 

Tablet is the largest dosage form and the largest dosage form. Large capacity glass bottles are rapidly pulling out of this area, replacing plastic bottles and aluminum-plastic blister packaging.

 

The most common blister packaging is made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and compound aluminum sheet (CFF). PVC sheet has good compatibility, easy to form and seal, low price, but relatively low moisture barrier. CFF has good moisture-proof and barrier, but it is easy to twist and can not see the medicine in it. Therefore, pills are seldom used. In order to solve the problem of poor barrier of PVC foam cap and high price of double aluminium sheet foam cap, PVDC coating on PVC is widely used. Some companies have developed films of fluoride chloride resin coated on PVC to improve barrier and transparency.

 

Because most of the drugs need to be stored away from light, white LDPE bottles are also the most commonly used drug packaging, especially suitable for large doses of Chinese and Western pills, tablets packaging. A small number of bottles are also made into transparent brown bottles according to their needs. This bottle is mainly made of PET material.

 

Most of the caps are made of PE or PP materials.

 

Aluminum-plastic composite bags have many advantages, such as good barrier, simple processing and so on. They are widely used. They are the main packing forms of Chinese and Western medicine powder and granule at present.

 

Generally speaking, bottles and bags for solid drug packaging in China can basically meet the needs in terms of processing methods. The existing problems are how to ensure the health and safety of products.