One of India’s leading pharma packaging companies, Schott Kaisha, has completed half a decade of successful partnership. Since its formation in 2008, this 50:50 joint venture has achieved consistent growth at an average of 25% every year. Currently, Schott Kaisha employs approximately 1,600 people in its plants in Daman, Jambusar and its Mumbai office, and supplies primary packaging material, such as vials and ampoules, to many leading pharmaceutical companies in India. “We are happy to have met highest demands of quality and supply with maximum customer satisfaction. We remain committed to help our customers achieve their own growth and quality objectives in India as well as abroad. This motivates the Schott Kaisha family to strive for the next milestones,” says Kairus Dadachanji, managing director of Schott Kaisha.
The partnership began in 2008,when Kaisha, an Indian producer of pharmaceutical containers made of neutral glass, joined hands with the international technology group Schott, a manufacturer of premium pharma packaging with headquarters in Mainz, Germany. Today, Schott Kaisha is a leading supplier of primary glass packaging to the pharmaceutical industry offering a ‘one stop’ solution for the entire range of small volume tubular glass packaging—ampoules, vials, cartridges and sterile prefillable syringes in India and the adjacent South Asian region.
Schott Kaisha inaugurated India’s first fully automated pharmaceutical packaging plant in February 2013 in Jambusar near Vadodara in Gujarat. This greenfield facility, set up with an initial investment of Euro 20 million (approximately `142 crore at the time), helped the joint venture to increase its production capacity by almost 50% to around 2.4 billion pieces per year. With the first module nearing its full capacity utilization in the first part of 2014, the company is looking to further expand production facility and to hire another 100 employees, bringing the total figure to more than 1700. The plant is housed in an area of 20 acres with ample room to construct additional production modules in paralle lwith increasing customer demand.
One of the main distinguishing factors of Scott Kaisha is the systems and quality normsthatfallinlinewithinternationalregulatoryandtechnologiesthatsatisfy rising customer demands. “Due to our strong focus on quality,basedonSchott’smorethan one hundred years of experience, we retain state-of-the-art equipment and a highly skilled workforce dedicated to quality control and inspection. Maintaining consistent global standards in all our facilities worldwide helps us to offer tailor-made products and services for growing international pharmaceutical markets such as India,” says JürgenSackhoff, executive vice president of Schott Pharmaceutical System.
In the last five years, Schott Kaisha has been awarded ISO 9001, ISO 14000-18000 and ISO 15378 certificates. In addition, Schott Kaisha has successfully set up an independent toolroom with highly specialized computer numerical machines (CNC) that enable a even more precise dimensional control.
Future in line with India’s rising pharma market
TherapidlyevolvingIndianpharmaceuticalindustrycreatesachallengingyetexciting opportunity for Schott Kaisha. According to several studies, the pharmaceutical market (drug spending) in India is expanding by approximately 14 to 17% every year, which is primarily driven by demand from India’s prospering middle class. To cater to this steady growth in demand, Schott Kaisha plans to extend its capacity by building further manufacturing lines in Jambusar. “We are confident of exceeding the market growth rate also in the future,” concludes KairusDadachanji.
