1. The use of blister packs continues to grow

Blister packs have been on the front lines of the battle for precise dosing. When taking medicines in blister packs, patients can better grasp the dosage of the medicine (the daily dosage and dosage cycle are clearly printed on the back of the package). The blister packaging has good sealing performance and is practical for protecting medicines, and the packaging process of placing a product with a fixed shape into a cavity and then covering it with a layer of film material enables it to be customized according to product design. These advantages make blister packs the second best-selling package for pharmaceutical products in the world.

2. Pay more attention to child-resistant packaging

According to the European Union for the Safety of Children, the number of children under the age of 14 who are acutely poisoned by direct exposure to medicinal products in Europe reaches 3,000 every year. Pharmaceutical regulators continue to pressure manufacturers to take steps to reduce such poisonings. Many manufacturers are pinning their hopes on innovative packaging, working on more child-resistant packaging, such as opaque materials to make blister materials so children can't see the candy-like pills inside.

3. Plastic bottles are in the highest demand

Another growing category of pharmaceutical packaging is plastic bottles. With the pharmaceutical industry's stagnant demand for glass bottles, demand for plastic bottles has continued to rise, and it is now the most popular pharmaceutical packaging in the world. The total global sales of plastic medicine bottles is expected to reach $20.6 billion by 2022.

4. Is the sachet packaging obsolete?

The "survival" of sachet packaging in the pharmaceutical industry depends on how innovative, such as the new "sachet" as secondary packaging developed by Bimax Medical Packaging and Presto. This pouch features a child-resistant pull-side closure, and a multi-layer composite structure that acts as a strong barrier to protect medicines from oxygen and moisture. This level of security allows manufacturers to use lower cost non-barrier blister packaging when choosing primary packaging materials.

5. Increased usage of prefilled syringes

Transparency Market Research predicts that the prefilled syringe market will be worth $4.98 billion by the end of 2019. The main driving factors are the continued steady growth of the injectable drug market and the many unsafe factors in the medication process caused by the dispensing of vials and syringes that can be avoided by prefilled syringes. An increasing number of medical practitioners prefer to use prefilled syringes.

6. Shelf influence and environmental protection become more important

The OTC market is saturated, and competition among brands is fierce. How product packaging attracts consumers' attention on pharmacy shelves, for manufacturers, the ultimate goal of packaging has become how to achieve maximum influence on pharmacy shelves with the least amount of material. In particular, consumers are becoming more environmentally conscious and manufacturers are more actively seeking to fulfill their corporate social responsibilities. Packaging material is very important, but to win with packaging, you have to strike a balance between visual, practical and material in the design.

7. Packaging design with patients first

To break through the competition in the OTC market with packaging design, major brands are working hard to reform packaging and bring more convenient ways to manage drugs to consumers. Examples abound, such as Strepsils replacing its traditional blister packs with plastic tubes, and ibuprofen's traditional gel line offering a quick-absorbing spray. In modern society, people's time is very short, putting convenience in place is the key, and even giving people a sense of convenience is very important.

8. Packaging focuses on consumer engagement

The coding logo on the packaging is a unique and highly targeted channel for brand owners to interact with consumers. Manufacturers can now share vast amounts of information through QR codes attached to packaging. Consumers can choose to scan these QR codes with their smartphones to obtain information such as dosage and storage instructions.

In 2022, the requirements for coding and marking on pharmaceutical packaging are still the focus of enterprises.