Compliance, security and biotech to drive packaging

Freedonia Group says it expects regulatory and standards updates regarding barrier protection, patient compliance, and counterfeiting to drive demand for enhanced-barrier plastic bottles, calendar and wallet blister packaging, prefillable syringes and inhalers, track/trace and authentication labels and unit-dose pouches.

Prefillable syringes and vials, Freedonia expects, will lead growth in primary packaging thanks to new biotech products, which require injection. Plastic bottles, however, will still be the most widely used package for oral drugs distributed in bulk and prescription-dose volumes. Requirements for unit dose packaging, including expanded label content and built-in track and trace features, will drive blister packaging.

Child-resistant caps are expected to remain the top closures for oral and liquid drug containers, but will lose momentum as blister packs and pouches penetrate unit dose applications.

The market researcher forecasts a 5.5 percent annual rise in demand for these value-added containers through 2014, to $18.4 billion.

- see the release