Pharmaceutical outsourcing services provider PCI Pharma Services (PCI) announced its intent to acquire Australia-based Pharmaceutical Packaging Professionals (PPP). PPP provides clinical trial manufacturing, packaging, storage and distribution services, and establishes a presence for PCI in Australia, viewed as pivotal to continued growth and expansion in the Asia-Pacific region.
PCI notes that Australia is one of the leading countries for Phase 1 studies globally, and with this acquisition, PPP’s Phase I offering enables PCI to better support customers from early phases of clinical development through to commercial launch.
Located in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, PPP is a leader in clinical trial supply with a suite of support services including early clinical phase sterile and non-sterile drug manufacture of investigational medicines, packaging and labeling services for investigational products, as well as logistical services including storage and distribution to global investigational sites.
PPP supports projects across a range of temperature conditions including controlled room temperature, 2°-8˚C, -20˚C, and -80˚C environments, which expands PCI’s existing capabilities in storing, packaging, and shipping cold chain products. PPP is currently undertaking a facility expansion and upgrade to add additional storage and distribution services, labeling and packaging rooms, Grade D manufacturing, as well as sterile-fill manufacturing capabilities for Phase II clinical studies.
PPP’s suite of services complements PCI’s global portfolio of clinical and commercial services, including clinical and commercial scale drug manufacturing, packaging and labeling of clinical trial medicines, global logistical services to investigational sites and commercial contract packaging services. PPP’s market presence with Phase I units as well as the company’s geographic reach and experience working with U.S., European, and Asia Pacific customers in countries including China, Korea, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and New Zealand, will allow PCI to continue to grow its capabilities in the region.
Global expansion
In October, 2017, PCI announced the acquisition of pharmaceutical and healthcare contract packaging services provider Millmount Healthcare, based in Dublin, Ireland, and located in the European Union. The move added four Dublin-based facilities to PCI’s global supply network and provided a continued growth platform for PCI’s expansion.
In addition to global acquisitions, PCI has been investing in its core business through a number of key investments and site expansions. PCI announced cold chain and ultra-cold chain expansions at its U.S.-based Philadelphia and Rockford locations in support of temperature-controlled packaging, storage and distribution. PCI has also undertaken site expansions of its Tredegar and Bridgend facilities in the United Kingdom.
New packaging lines have been installed in its commercial packaging business, as well as expansion of its global capacity in serialization and anti-counterfeiting technologies. These investments support the recent U.S. DSCSA and EU FMD regulations, as well as advancing serialization requirements in emerging market regions such as China, South Korea, Turkey, Brazil and others.
![“Another key [UDI] benefit, because we're calling that product by the same name across the healthcare supply chain… rich and robust data that we can access around supply consumption and utilization rates. One of the buzz terms we've heard during the COVID-19 crisis was what's my burn rate? How fast am I going through gowns, masks, gloves?” – Mike Schiller, Senior Director at AHRMM](https://img.healthcarepackaging.com/files/base/pmmi/all/image/2020/08/UDI.5f4d326e41d53.png?auto=format&fit=crop&h=146&w=340)
