Labeling

Lauraville Packaging LLC (Syracuse, NY) exhibited its solutions at EastPack for encapsulating flat items such as booklets, pamphlets, and others into adhesive-backed pouches for application to flat packages. The filled pouches, which can be provided in rolls or fan folded in cartons, can be applied by a label applicator to packaging.

Schreiner MediPharm (Munich, Germany) offers secure and innovative labels that provide tamper protection for product packs, as well as for variable printed data like batch number or drug expiration dates. Special void effects are integrated into the label for anti-counterfeiting purposes. Thus, they prevent re-labeling of product packs as well as alteration of variable product data.

Label Production Systems

SHL is continuing to expand operations in the United States with the establishment of SHL Pharma Systems, a state-of-the-art final assembly and packaging operation. Located in South Florida, this new facility will offer final assembly, labeling, and packaging services to SHL's pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers.

Sagent Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Schaumburg, IL), a specialty pharmaceutical company, receives approval from FDA to market mesna injection. Mesna is a prophylactic agent used to reduce the incidence of hemorrhagic cystitis caused by ifosfamide chemotherapy.

"Mesna is our second addition this month to our cancer supportive care product line, allowing Sagent's sales teams to provide customers with an expanding range of products for oncology patients," says Jeffrey M. Yordon, CEO, founder and chairman of the board, Sagent.

CCL Industries Inc. announced today that it has acquired Purbrick Ltd, a privately held company based in Melbourne, Australia. Purbrick supplies patient information leaflets and pressure-sensitive labels to global pharmaceutical customers located in Australia.

Medical device manufacturers have often struggled with including multiple-page instructions for use (IFU) with sterile medical packaging. Including paper materials inside sterile packaging could present contamination challenges, and leaving an IFU loose inside a shelf pack could risk misplacement. Responding to a customer challenge, Robinson Printing & Creative Media (Temecula, CA) has developed a potential solution.

The U.S. Patent Office has awarded a patent to WS Packaging Group Inc. (Green Bay, WI) for its FlexWrap extended text label, which is part of its MultiVision line of extended text labels. FlexWrap labels are suitable for a range of applications, including fully conformable squeeze tubes, glass vaccine vials, and any small-diameter structure such as barrel containers for lip balms or brushes. The label materials are completely water-resistant.

FDA has announced that it is requiring all drugs called Erythropoiesis-Stimulating Agents (ESAs) to be prescribed and used under a risk management program, known as a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS), to ensure their safe use. The ESAs that are part of the REMS are marketed under the names Epogen, Procrit, and Aranesp.

UPM Raflatac (Mills River, NC) has received ISO 14001:2004 Environmental Management System certification for its state-of-the-art labelstock factory in Dixon, IL. This certification represents a significant step toward achieving one of the company's major goals for its labelstock and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) facilities worldwide, which is to develop Environmental Management Systems (EMS) that operate in accordance with an internationally recognized standard.