Stoelzle targets pharma glass container top spot with new Type II production technology
09 Dec 2020 --- Germany-based Stoelzle Glass Group is releasing new glass types for the pharmaceutical industry in efforts to become the industry’s frontrunning glass supplier.
Stoelzle will be adding a Type II glass – heat treated on the internal surface for intravenous application safety – to its portfolio for the first time.
The company is also adding a new process for treating commonly manufactured molded Type III glass containers made of soda-lime.
Over the past year, Stoelzle R&D Team worked on the development of an innovative, resource-efficient, safe and stable process for Type II glass production used for acidic and neutral aqueous preparations, both parenteral and non-parenteral.
“Our intention was to develop a new process for inner treatment of soda silica glass to reduce the main weakness of the current two existing processes regarding stability and safety,” explains Alexander Stern, chief supply chain officer at Stoelzle.
“We also wanted to develop a process which also fits smaller bottles by enabling optimal dosing of the treatment.”
Environmentally friendly glassware
Stern says the company’s ambition behind the new glass development process is to become the pharmaceutical industry’s primary supplier for glass containers.
The company broadly outlines its production process as one ensuring a consistently high quality and guaranteeing a high level of work safety.
Stoelzle is aiming to become the leading player in pharmaceutical glass.According to Stoelzle, it also adheres to the group’s environmental sustainability goals.
“With our process, we also aimed to overcome difficulties other treatment technologies face with small container sizes,” Niklas Zwettlerhead of R&D adds.
“Extensive laboratory analysis and inline samplings of container sizes ranging from 6 to 250 ml showed a good stability of our process over a wide range of filling volumes and adherence to all requirements of US and European Pharmacopoeias for Type II Glass.”
Close cooperation between Stoelzle’s engineers and production specialists during the development process allows for industrial production to begin by mid-2021, Zwettlerhead asserts.
With already produced industrial samples, full production of Stoelzle Type II is set to start June 2021 in one of Stoelzle’s pharma-dedicated plants in Köflach, Austria.
The plant has two furnaces with a daily capacity of 270 tons of glass. Around 1.5 billion pieces of white, amber and green packaging glass are produced annually on 11 fully automated production lines.
Glass packaging on the rise
Due to its durability, high barrier properties and cultural appeal, glass remains the first choice packaging material for many products, including some food and beverages like wine, as well as pharmaceuticals.
Glass containers are chemically inert, easily heated and sterilized and protect contents from contamination.
The most common types of glass used in the pharmaceutical industry are Type I, Type II and Type III, determined by their degree of hydrolytic resistance.
Glass packaging in other areas of industry, including for jams, spreads and sauces, has seen a steady rise due to its beneficial properties.
Innova Market Insights reports steady growth in the glass packaging category, while three in five food and beverage launches tracked with glass as a material are bottles (Global, 2018).
Edited
By Louis Gore-Langton
