August Faller is expanding its combination product portfolio.

Until now, multiple information carriers for pharmaceutical products could be combined in the form of banderols, labels and adhesive dots. Now the specialist in pharmaceutical packaging has also made it possible to combine a package leaflet with a patient alert card in a sealed film. Pharmacists benefit from more efficient packaging and improved product protection.

Increasingly, cartons for some pharmaceutical products contain – along with the standard regulatory leaflet – other information carriers such as patient alert cards and medical alert cards. These cards, which patients carry on them, provide information quickly for hospitals and doctors in an emergency.

Perfectly combined for improved efficiency

The August Faller Group develops and produces solutions for combined patient information leaflets in a variety of forms at its plant in Binzen: with banderols, labels or adhesive dots. The company has developed the new combination product for a major pharmaceutical company. With this solution, an outsert can be combined with a patient alert card in up to three languages and then sealed in film.

The film reliably protects the combined information carriers from dirt and wear. The low shrink tension of the film, which was selected after thorough testing, means that the product remains flat. The film is perforated to facilitate opening by the patient. A further plus is that the information is available to the patient as a complete package. In addition, the new combination product has significant packaging cost advantages for pharmacists.

Because the combined leaflets can be dispensed into cartons like a single product, two steps can be eliminated: folding a leaflet and inserting an additional information carrier. The customer can therefore save the costs of a dispensing unit on the packaging line while at the same time improving the efficiency of the packaging process itself.

A simple precise solution

The combination product is precisely dispensed into the package. The original customer specified a tolerance of one millimetre for the combined product. Faller met the pharmaceutical company’s requirement by processing the original formats directly on the assembly line. The two information carriers are first placed precisely on top of each other. “Multiple high-resolution camera systems ensure that the correct information carriers are precisely combined,” explains Christiana Klüppelberg, application and process engineer at Faller. “The system recognises faulty products and shunts them pneumatically towards the shrink tunnel without interrupting the production flow,” she adds. Strong seams are produced in the downstream packaging machine fitted with a shrink tunnel. The seams reliably seal the film but are fine enough not to affect the product tolerance.

Also suitable for other applications

Many other flexible combinations of components are possible with the new combination-product protective film. For example, information carriers such as allergy ID cards and medication cards with supplements on the use of inhalers or autoinjectors could be combined with a standard package leaflet.

About the Binzen site of the August Faller Group

Since 2003, August Faller has been exclusively producing package leaflets of various forms at its Binzen plant. Given that the share of outsert, small folded and combination products has been steadily increasing for some time, August Faller aims to expand this area. It has invested in new sealing methods, an automated packaging machine, systems to combine package leaflets and various outsert folding machines. August Faller currently has 185 employees at its Binzen plant.