September 27, 2018

Pre-Sterilized / Ready-to-Use (RTU) Primary Packaging: Current Market Landscape and Future Growth Opportunities

By Arun Gupta Pharmaceutical Packaging, Pharmaceuticals 0 Comments

The use of ready-to-use (RTU), or pre-sterilized / pre-treated, container-closure systems have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional primary packaging, adding significant value to streamline pharmaceutical fill / finish operations. These packaging components eliminate multiple steps in the overall fill / finish process (mainly washing, sterilizing and preparing containers), thereby, helping improve operational efficiencies in compliance to existing regulatory standards. Owing to several other benefits, RTU container-closure systems have gradually gained popularity in the pharmaceutical industry.

Over 45 companies are actively involved in the development of ready-to-use (RTU) primary packaging products and affiliated processing equipment

The market is fragmented, featuring the presence of a large number of established players; a relatively larger proportion of the industry stakeholders are based in Europe

Currently, there are over 70 commercially available RTU primary packaging products and close to 50 different equipment systems that can process such container-closures

In order to cope up with the prevalent and upcoming pharmaceutical trends, the packaging industry is steadily evolving to cater to the changing needs of drug manufacturers

A number of partnerships have been established in the recent past; in addition, stakeholders have made some strategic acquisitions to strengthen their product portfolios

The RTU container-closure systems market is projected to grow at an annualized rate of 11.9% in the period between 2018 and 2030

The opportunity is likely to be distributed across different packaging types, with plastic as the preferred material; Asia Pacific market is projected to grow at a relatively faster pace