Comparing/contrasting medical device and food packaging

In this Q&A, Randall Troutman, Account Manager, Printpack Medical, addresses standards, materials issues, sustainability, and workforce development.

Healthcare Packaging: You’ve worked on the design and validation of sterile barrier packaging systems for medical devices for Medtronic, Smith and Nephew, and Oliver-Tolas, and on commercial strategies for flexible food packaging with LMI Packaging before recently returning to the medical device supplier side with Printpack Medical. What are the primary differences you see in terms of packaging needs for end-user firms in both food and medical devices and how can each industry learn from the other?

Randall Troutman, Printpack: In a lot of cases, packaging material producers are making similar flexible materials for different end-use markets. However, a lot of the knowledge, experience, and technology is transferrable between them. At the end of the day, the products being packaged can have a positive impact on consumer health and safety, or a negative one, if the value chain is not executed correctly.

The biggest contrast I see is that food packaging over the past 10 years has primarily focused on cost maximization, while medical device packaging has focused on safety and quality control. The next 10 years, I believe, will bring these two segments more into balance as medical device manufacturers (MDMs) push for improved costs and more economical materials while food producers require increased quality standards and manufacturing control.

At HealthPack 2014, an MDM professional said that packaging provides an area to help manage costs for an MDM, yet she voiced concerns about meeting multiple standards that were causing her company to have to spend more money. Can you comment on this matter and offer your insights?

It seems in food packaging that the cost-to-performance balance has been heavily strained over the past 10 years. Food packaging typically includes high-volume, lower price-point materials compared to medical device packaging. As requirements increase for food packagers and material producers, the increased costs for validations, cleanliness standards, traceability, etc., have to be absorbed by material producers with an already lower price-point product. As price pressures mount, the cost and effort to transition a food packaging material to a newer technology is much less expensive and involved than what is required for medical packaging transitions. This affords material producers and food packagers more options in developing lower-cost, equivalent (or higher) performing materials at a faster pace to stay in line with market pressures.

As it relates to medical device packaging, these standards have been in place and the price point of typical medical packaging materials has stayed higher than that of comparable food packaging materials. With the focus on cost more prevalent in medical packaging than it has ever been before, a material producer will be further challenged to maintain the strictest levels of control and quality. As newer, potentially more cost-effective materials are introduced, the cost to develop, qualify, validate, and implement is very high for medical device applications. It is a challenge to manage cost while maintaining the highest standards to introduce new technologies that offer a more competitive price-to-performance ratio.

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