Pharmaceutical and Medical Packaging News Magazine
PMPN Article Index

Originally Published May 1998

PHARMACEUTICAL

Packaging Nutritional Supplements

by Erik Swain, Senior Editor

The nutritional supplements market has been growing exponentially in recent years—fueled by consumer demand for alternatives to conventional medicine—and is now estimated to be almost $7 billion. Like any industry, as it has grown it has become more sophisticated—and more regulated. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the products' packaging.

As more players enter the industry, including some of the big pharmaceutical companies, an appealing package that catches the eye of the retail customer is becoming more essential. Sophisticated packaging is on the rise as nutraceuticals try to look more like pharmaceuticals to convince the mainstream public of their legitimacy. And new FDA regulations effective March 1999 will require supplements to include more information on their labels than ever before.

BOTTLES, BLISTERS, OR POUCHES?

As recently as 10 years ago, nutraceutical packaging usually consisted of nothing more than a plain label glued onto a plain bottle. Now some nutritional supplement manufacturers are moving to blister packages and pouches, which, in addition to being more secure, can help those who take several supplements every day to organize their regimen.

"Blisters fit as part of nutritional supplement manufacturers' overall marketing plan," says David R. Sciubba, healthcare sales manager, Hueck Foils LLC (Manasquan, NJ), which converts foils and films for blister packages. "They may be more costly for certain products, but they provide added protection and convenience for the consumer."

Using multipacks also makes sense for the industry, says Howard Thau, president of Sonic Packaging Industries (Hillsdale, NJ), because many consumers take a few vitamins or supplements several times a day. "Instead of carrying six different bottles around, you can have one pouch containing multiple vitamins or supplements," he explains.

Still, bottles remain the dominant packaging format in the United States. Notes Patrick Dent, pharmaceutical packaging marketing manager for Reynolds Metals/Flexible Packaging (Richmond, VA): "The move toward blisters by ethical pharmaceutical companies is one of compliance. Nutraceuticals are less encumbered as far as FDA regulations are concerned."

The Reseal-A-Tab label from Challenge Printing Co. gives nutritional packagers extra room for labeling information.

Those who have stayed with bottles often no longer settle for the simple screw top and black-and-white label. The bottles, whether plastic, glass, or something else, can keep out light and other elements that could jeopardize the product.

Waddington IP Jaycare (Carlstadt, NJ), Alpha Plastics Inc. (St. Louis), and Captive Plastics Inc. (Piscataway, NJ) have all been aggressive in marketing PET bottles to the nutritional supplements industry. PET bottles have the clarity of styrene but are much less porous, according to Dan Creston, vice president/general manager for Alpha Plastics.

The nutraceutical makers "see the aesthetic issues, performance issues, and comparative costs" of using PET, says Peter Martin, vice president of sales and marketing for Captive Plastics.

Flip-top dispensers, tamperproof closures, and shrink wrap are now common. Preservative tools such as desiccants and sorbents are also a staple. "There has been greater use of child-resistant caps and tamper-evident seals," says Richard Kaufman, vice president, Paragon Laboratories (Torrance, CA), a contract supplement manufacturer that handles packaging.

"Tamper-resistant packaging is not required, but we want to give consumers confidence in the product," says Janet Ralston, vice president of marketing for supplement maker Advanced Medical Nutrition Systems (Hayward, CA).

GAINING SHELF PRESENCE

Consumers can now find an array of multicolored, graphically enhanced labels when surveying the shelf at the health food store or giant retailer. "You're seeing more high-end graphics than ever before, especially in nutraceuticals," says Randy Lindert, account manager for Beck Carton (Milwaukee). "You can't just put on a label with the name and logo. It has to pop out."

If anything, the nutritional manufacturers, who have no patent protections or prescription status to fall back on, understand that fact even better than the ethical pharmaceutical firms do, says Tony Kapsaskis, director of sales and marketing for Challenge Printing (Wallington, NJ). "One of the main concerns nutritional manufacturers have is with the image on the shelf," he says. "That poses challenges. You have to make sure the labels within each client's product line are not different in look and color. We installed an electronic spectrodensitometer to analyze color electronically."

Hueck Foils' blister foils help protect nutritional supplements.

Troy Hallock, director of marketing for supplement manufacturer Nittany Pharmaceuticals Inc. (Milroy, PA), says he pushed his superiors to change the labels on the company's products when he arrived in 1996 and finally got them to agree to it. "The design had to be bolder," he says. "You couldn't read it. The product name needs to jump out at you."

NEW REGULATIONS DRIVE PACKAGE CHANGES

While most of the rules implemented from the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 will apply to labeling, they will also have an effect on quality control, as manufacturers will be under pressure to make sure each product has the exact amount of ingredients the label says it does.

The rules, published in September 1997 and going into effect March 23, 1999, require any nutraceutical product containing vitamins, minerals, herbs, or amino acids to be labeled as a dietary supplement and to carry a "Supplement Facts" panel on the label. Required information includes appropriate serving size, the presence of 14 specific nutrients when included at significant levels, the presence of other vitamins and minerals, dietary ingredients for which no recommended daily intakes (RDIs) have been set, and the identity (but not concentration) of each dietary ingredient in a proprietary blend. Products with botanical ingredients must show which part of the plant they came from. A minimum print size is required. The phrase "high potency" may only be used if the product contains at least 100% of the RDI for a vitamin or mineral (for multiingredient supplements, two-thirds of the nutrients must be at least 100% of the RDI), and the term "antioxidant" is permissible if the nutrient has been shown to inhibit free radicals or prevent chemical reactions initiated by free radicals. These are only the most important of the rules, which take up 66 pages of the Federal Register.

For the next year, supplement makers will be grappling with how to fit all the extra information on their packages. Almost all will need to have them redesigned. "This is the number-one challenge facing our customers and ourselves," says Des Laffan, vice president of operations for Pharmalabel (Greensboro, NC).

"With the nutraceutical industry still evolving, manufacturers find they're needing to communicate more comprehensive information," says Chris Schaefer, director of marketing for CCL Label Inc. (Itasca, IL). "Companies with more resources are turning toward packaging with a little more value, such as expanded content labels that combine packaging labels and detailed information. For smaller companies, creatively making the most of their space on single-ply labels is the preferred route."

"We're probably going to put the products in bigger bottles because we'll have to make the labels bigger," says Hallock of Nittany Pharmaceuticals. "And we've purchased equipment for additional testing. Some companies will go out of business because they will not be able to spend the money to meet the FDA regulations, but that's not a problem with us."

INCREASING USE OF CONTRACT PACKAGERS

Supplement manufacturers almost always used to do their own packaging. That usually consisted of buying bottles, getting a local print shop to print labels, and gluing them on. But market and regulatory conditions have drawn them to contract packagers, and vice versa. Except for those large enough to have their own machinery and quality control systems, manufacturers are finding that they need help in designing packages to meet the new regulations. Packagers, meanwhile, want to tap into a rapidly growing industry. "We're getting a lot of new nutritional customers," says Claudia Mace, account executive for The Control Group (Norwood, NJ), which prints labels, inserts, and outserts. "They use local printers and realize that's not cutting it."

Tim McBride, vice president of sales and marketing for contract packager Sharp Ivers-Lee (Conshohocken, PA), has also seen a marked increase in the number of nutraceutical manufacturers his company works with. "There really was no market a few years ago," he explains. "They found us."

"We have two nutraceutical customers whose business with us has doubled every year for the past two or three years," notes Tim Wayman, executive vice president of Beck Carton. "That tells us it's an expanding marketplace for sure."

East Earth Herb Inc. (Eugene, OR) is one manufacturer that does its own packaging but might be looking for professional help, says Fran Johnson, the firm's national sales manager. "We use a hot-glue label, which is not only inefficient, it's problematic," she says. "The glue tends to show through the labels, so we want to move to pressure-sensitive. We use a local printer, who prints what we tell them. But finding printing companies who know more than we do is tough. We've wound up being the blind leading the blind."

In some cases, the packagers are seeking the supplement manufacturers. For example, Plymouth Printing Co. (Cranford, NJ), is investigating whether to court the market, says Marc Friedlander, director of sales and marketing. "There is great market growth from year to year," he says. "Those companies are starting to get more sophisticated, and companies of our stature have a role to play. But we have to make contacts and develop leads and relationships, which are now on a limited basis."

It helps that most contract packagers are already set up to handle pharmaceutical packaging. Most say they use the same operations for both segments, and that nutraceutical manufacturers are often willing to pay extra for the security of knowing their products are being packaged with the same high standards as prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

"When the big pharmaceutical companies are looking at nutritionals and spending the effort and money to do clinical studies, that shows where we're going" in terms of production standards, says Rick Krause, director of sales and marketing for TestPak Inc. (Whippany, NJ), which does blister, bottle, and pouch packaging. "Our SOPs are tailored for strict pharmaceutical compliance, and we package all products using the same standards."

"We have only one standard for production," says Burton Schwartz, partner, MilPak Inc. (Pine Brook, NJ), a contract blister packager. "It is not a marketing tool; it's the way we run our business."

UNIQUE REQUIREMENTS

But despite their increasing similarities to pharmaceuticals, there are some issues unique to nutritional supplements. One is speed. While pharmaceutical companies may know two years in advance how many packages they will need and when they will need them, nutraceutical makers operate on a much more unpredictable timetable. Sometimes this means filling a big order on short notice.

"Quality and service are the biggest issues" in dealing with nutritional clients, says Barrett Hauser, vice chairman for Desiccare Inc. (Santa Fe Springs, CA). "These customers will log in an order needing desiccants overnight. We run to forecast, as opposed to order, so we can ship the next day. They need that kind of service."

Francine M. Rossi, vice president of sales and marketing for Index Manufacturing Company, Inc. (Northvale, NJ), says her company sells about half of its capsule-filling machines to the nutritional industry. While pharmaceutical clients are usually interested in options such as an integrated weight control system, the nutritional customers value output above all other features, she says. "Our multiple-tamping process is most forgiving in running herbal and vitamin supplements," she says. "Our high-speed capsule fillers offer nutritional companies the maximum output available in today's market while providing consistency and reliability."

Some packaging characteristics that pharmaceuticals use, such as inserts, are not used much on nutritional supplements because they are not required or are considered too expensive. But some manufacturers have inquired about such features since the new rules came out, packagers say.

CONCLUSION

The new regulations may hurt some of the smaller supplement manufacturers or even put them out of business. Those who will survive are likely to be the ones who understand the benefits of the new regulatory climate and adapt to it.

Once past the regulatory hurdles, these companies must then package their supplements in easy-to-use, appealing containers in order to attract consumers. After all, without a prescription to encourage their use, supplements must speak for themselves from the shelf.

Lead photo by Roni Ramos