Custom Pharmaceuticals Ltd

March 2011

Custom Pharmaceuticals Ltd (CPL) is a part of the Custom Healthcare Group, a business that was established over 30 years ago in Brighton Sussex. CPL is a GMP compliant solid dose contract manufacturing organisation (CMO) of branded and generic prescription medicines and is growing faster today than at any time in its history due to demand from its UK customer base for a local source of supply.

The company is building a reputation for delivering consistent technical support, quality services, at competitive prices from within the UK. CPL is capable of delivering from initial concept, through to development, stability testing, analytical method development, commercial manufacture and packaging for the UK and EU markets.

In a fast growing relationship with pharmaceutical and healthcare packaging specialist Medica Packaging, Custom Pharmaceuticals has been delighted to take advantage of Medica's ability to produce the three main packaging elements for a pharma product from its single production site near Crewe, Cheshire.

Commenting on this capability, David Lessels, Commercial Manager at Custom Pharmaceuticals, said: "Medica is a unique packaging supplier in that it can provide cartons, leaflets and labels from one single production site. This means that it is very simple and straightforward to co-ordinate deliveries of these elements; something that is always more difficult and time consuming if they are coming from three separate suppliers."

Run lengths being handled by Medica for Custom Pharmaceuticals are varied, but include a recent 2.5 million order covering a number of different product variations, as well as orders from just 10,000 products. "Medica is a very flexible supplier," added David Lessels. "They are perfectly able to manage the smaller orders as well as the multi-million requirements. Medica, of course, has all of the required pharmaceutical accreditations for packaging production, and the quality of product that it has produced for us has been exceptional."

Leaflet production facilities at Medica include web-fed printing as well as sheet-fed production, meaning that it can cope with both large and small print quantities. The company also uses market leading GUK folding equipment to create the most intricate of leaflet folding patterns. For label production the company is already looking to further expand its recently installed seven-colour Gallus EM340S flexographic printing press. The system is complemented by the addition of a Scantech VisionTrack rewind and inspection machine to help ensure 100% quality.

The label production system at Medica is capable of a wide range of label production formats, including reverse printing, printing on adhesive, edge slit, in-line die cutting, unsupported film, and a wide range of paper substrates. Self-adhesive labels, as well as other applications, can be successfully produced on the Gallus EM 340S. A state-of-the-art web transport concept utilising servo-drive technology ensures optimal multi substrate flexibility, operational efficiency and excellent printing quality.

Custom Healthcare Group has spent the past few years restructuring and inwardly investing with a multi-million pound programme into sophisticated plant and resources specifically aimed to not only meet but exceed customer needs and expectations. That investment and expansion programme continues. Being independent and privately owned gives the business the ability to remain flexible to suit our customer's needs, budget and objectives in national and global distribution of generic medicines.