COMPANIES
Complete Inspection Systems, Inc., has partnered with Digimarc Corp. to create an advanced track, trace, and anti-counterfeiting system. It uses digital watermarking technology and does not require costly additions to packaging, redesign of graphics, or a bar code marring the product’s appearance. It allows a consumer to verify the authenticity of the product with a Web-enabled mobile phone, and helps a company develop a relationship with the consumer by sending marketing information directly to their mobile phone.
• Medical device package, product, and material tester DDL, Inc. will host a training course on minimizing supply chain logistics costs through wiser product/package design and better test methods. The course is scheduled for Oct. 13 - 15 at 10200 Valley View Road, #101, Eden Prairie, MN, and will be presented by the Equipment Reliability Institute. Separately, DDL announced that Mike Foster, its West Coast packaging engineer, was transferred to sister company Cryopak’s sales team to sell temperature-controlled products.
• The Parenteral Drug Assn. offers live and on-demand Web seminars to PDA members and nonmembers. Its top five on-demand seminars focus on microbiology, validation issues, design, process performance qualification, and European Union regulations.
• Rio Tinto received a binding offer from Amcor to acquire the majority of the Alcan Packaging businesses.
• Rondo-Pak has redesigned its Web site with a fresh, new look that provides site visitors with a more seamless view of how the company delivers the benefits of a global corporation with the service levels of a family-run business.
• Alcoa announced a milestone in its growth in China with the inauguration of the Alcoa Bohai sheet business at its plant in Qinhuangdao. The plant has the capacity to produce high-quality aluminum sheet for body-can stock for packaging applications, as well as sheet for other industries. The plant is equipped with one 1+3 hot-mill line, one cold mill, and one lithographic sheet line with one slitter, plus a series of finishing equipment.
• Catalent Pharma Solutions appointed Scott Houlton as group president for a new business unit called the Development and Clinical Services segment. The new segment brings together the company’s analytical and science services and regulatory consulting services, formerly its Sterile Technologies segment, with its clinical supply services, formerly included in the Packaging Services segment. The new segment will support the development and testing of drugs and biologics through scientific, regulatory, and clinical trial supply chain services. Separately, the company announced the completion of the first FDA general cGMP audit and preapproval inspection of its Buenos Aires, Argentina, pharmaceutical softgel facility, with no reported observations on FDA Form 483.
PEOPLE
Phil DiGiacomo was promoted to vice president, sales and marketing, and Matt Dawes to director of sales at Anderson Packaging, a business unit of AmerisourceBergen Packaging Group. ...Steven Jones was appointed as regulator affairs manager and Drew Hoffman as business development manager for Pharma Tech Industries. ... Neopac has hired Andreas Geiger to the position of head of innovation and development, and appointed Thomas Kaufmann to head of quality management.. Also, Neopac appointed Martina Christiansen director of sales, Pharma. ...John LaHaye was appointed vice president of business development for the commercial packaging business of Catalent Pharma Solutions’ Packaging Services segment. ...Mary Czarnopys was named the new Midwest sales representative for Cortegra. She will cover Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Nebraska, Illinois, and northern Indiana, focusing on clients in the medical device, pharmaceutical, biotech, and diagnostic industries. ... Julia M. Amadio has joined MWV as vice president of global marketing for the company’s healthcare business.
ACHIEVEMENTS
PolyOne Corp. announced that it received the Frost & Sullivan 2009 North American Plastics in Medical Tubing & Catheters Product Line Strategy of the Year Award. ...Perfecseal, a Bemis company, has registered to the ISO 13485:2003 Medical Device Quality Management System for its manufacturing facility in Philadelphia.
