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Form-Fill-Seal Manufacturing of Polyolefin Bags for Parenteralia

Bernd Fischer

Plümat Maschinenbau, Espelkamp

The portion of plastic containers on the world wide market of primary package is growing and the percentage of parenterals filled in glass bottles is declining. The last big markets which are changing from glass bottles to plastic are the territory of the former USSR and China. All other major world markets are using plastic containers as standard. Based on informations, collected from pharmaceutical companies all over the world, over 60 % of the plastic containers are made of polyolefins. The total annual capacity of form-fill-seal (FFS) machines for polyolefin bags installed in 2001 and 2002 is more than 500 million units per year. This is more than in the 10 years before. This shows that especially the percentage of polyolefin bags is growing exorbitantly. New developments of connectors specially designed for polypropylen (PP) films and growing number of film suppliers are having a positive effect on the material costs of the containers and process stability of FFS machines. Intravenous solutions filled in polyolefin bags are the newest development in the history of parenterals, with a high potential for innovation and future applications.
In the mass production of intravenous solutions FFS is under pharmaceutical and economical aspects the optimal production method and is becoming more and more the standard in the world wide manufacturing of flexible primary packaging.

Key Words Form-fill-seal · Intravenous solution · Parenterals · Primary packaging · Polyolefin bags · Polypropylen bags