PA Consulting and PulPac are calling upon pharma, consumer health and FMCG industries to join the Blister Pack Collective to bring the world’s first Dry Molded Fiber tablet pack to market – minimising the use of plastics for over-the-counter and prescription drugs and vitamins.
With 100,000 tonnes of plastic produced globally for medicine packaging every year, PulPac, the Swedish R&D and IP company behind Dry Molded Fiber, and PA Consulting (PA), the consultancy that’s bringing ingenuity to life, have launched a Blister Pack Collective to use PulPac’s technology to provide a recyclable and sustainable fiber alternative with minimal use of plastic to traditional non-recyclable PVC (Polyvinyl Chloride) blister packs.
Dry Molded Fiber uses renewable pulp and cellulose resources to produce low-cost, high-performance fibre-based packaging. The proprietary manufacturing process uses less CO2 and almost no water to create highly versatile tablet arrays that match the design and tablet count of commodity PVC, providing a like-for-like, scalable solution for pharma and consumer healthcare companies to use.
Philip Fawcus, Dry Molded Fiber Technical Lead and Sustainable Materials Expert at PA Consulting, commented: “PulPac’s Dry Molded Fiber technology combined with the ingenious PA team has allowed the shapes, functions and features of current plastic blister packs to be translated into cellulose – a huge step for the industry as they seek sustainable packaging options.”
With an initial proof of concept to demonstrate viability, industry collaboration is now required to accelerate development.
Sanna Fager, Chief Commercial Officer at PulPac, commented: “The innovative tablet blister packs designed by the PA team demonstrates a viable fiber-based concept of a circular solution in cellulose that can solve a global challenge. Leveraging the benefits of our Dry Molded Fiber technology – instead of single-use PVC – these packs would be circular in paper-streams and still be functional, scalable, but most importantly affordable. Industry players that seek to be a force for sustainable change in the packaging industry are very welcome to join the collective in support of this transition to sustainability with rapid adoption and global impact.”
Jamie Stone, Dry Molded Fiber Design Lead and Sustainability Design Expert at PA Consulting, said: “It will take innovation and collaboration to tackle the climate crisis, and our partnership with PulPac epitomises this. Using our collective strengths, we have found a solution to tackle one of the huge plastic waste issues across industries reliant on tablet blister packs. We now need industry to join us and help accelerate the development of this ingenious solution and help remove tonnes of problem plastic waste from the planet.”
