Tray-forming Line for Ampoules
Solupharm started its business as an everyday chemist’s when, in 1965, Dr. Hans-Jürgen Kümmell opened his shop in Melsungen, Hesse, Germany. After several years of selling infusions, the turning point came about in 1974: the family-run pharmacy turned into Solupharm Pharmazeutische Erzeugnisse and focused on producing and distributing advanced parenteral drugs.
40 years on, Solupharm provides jobs for 350 employees and has a yearly turnover of more than 40 million Euro. Despite such growth and internationalisation strategies, the business still runs as a family, just like it was at the very beginning, because the enterprise is indeed run by the son-in-law of the founder, and pharmacist, Friedemann Seitz.
Solupharm is a modern and dynamic business and these features are indeed paramount when producing pharmaceuticals in an aseptic environment, because it takes utmost observance of relevant standards and the use of packaging machinery that in turn guarantees a perfectly sterile packaging environment.
This is why Solupharm decided to turn to Marchesini Group. We have more than one thing in common with this German company: we both started in 1974, we are both family-run businesses, but with an international inclination, and we esteem both personnel and customers. Thanks to the fact that we share these assets, we have given life to a winning partnership with Solupharm, which will indeed continue in 2016 too, when we hand over their fifth packaging line for sterile products.
QUESTION: What’s your core business?
ANSWER: We started 40 years ago as a toll manufacturer of sterile parenteral products. Since that time we are following that strict philosophy not to be a competitor of the customer and acting as a pure contract manufacturer for currently more than 120 different partners worldwide.
Q. What’s your mission?
A. Being a reliable partner for every customer, to manufacture affordable basic medicinal drugs and to keep life worth living for patients who need the products that we make.
Q. What do you produce?
A. We specialize in manufacturing sterile water-based parenteral products, with limited toxicity and moderate risk of environmental exposure. Vitamins, Painkillers, Homoeopathic formulations and many other product types are filled into ampoules (1 ml – 30 ml) and vials (5 ml – 500 ml). Last year, we filled, packaged and analyzed 170 million ampoules and 20 million vials.
Q. What are your strategies for the future?
A. We want to maintain the status of an independent, family-owned company which tries to cover the needs of the markets. By permanently expanding its capacity, we are able to offer an extensive range of products and a selected range of dosage forms, which our customers distribute worldwide. The tailored approach to the specific requirements of our customers distinguishes Solupharm from standardized systems of comparable companies.
Q. What are the technical innovations you use?
A. Our key asset is state-of-the-art manufacturing. The best-of-class approach in filling, sterilization, optical control and packaging systems is a “MUST” at Solupharm, in order to guarantee customised solutions.
Q. Why did you chose the Marchesini Group?
A. Marchesini has been a reliable partner of Solupharm for many years. Four lines of Marchesini are presently running at our packaging facilities and have helped us make the packaging process faster and less expensive. A 5th line has been ordered and should be delivered by January 2016.
Technical focus
Compactness, versatility and great flexibility thanks to the employment of robotics. These are the keywords that inspired the development of Unica, one of the robotic lines that Solupharm bought from Marchesini Group.
Unica integrates the deep draw thermoforming and the carton packaging processes in a single monobloc unit. The use of the most advanced robotics both upstream, during product feeding into the thermoformed tray and downstream to the monobloc, during the transfer of the tray to the cartoner, allows to package a wide variety of cosmetic and pharmaceutical products at high speeds, up to 120 cartons per minute, in a footprint of only 8 meters.