Merck KGaA has opened a new EUR 63-million ($72-million) packaging center at its headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany.

The new 15,000-square-meter facility will be dedicated to packaging and shipping the company’s current portfolio of medicines to 90-plus countries, including for Glucophage (metformin), Concor (bisoprolol) and Euthyrox (levothyroxine) in the areas of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and thyroid disorders, respectively. It will also provide capacity for potential future pharmaceutical products currently in clinical development, such as evobrutinib in the area of neurology-immunology and tepotinib in the area of oncology.

With eight fully automated packaging lines and robotized logistics, Merck KGaA says the new packaging center will have the capacity to process more than 210 million boxes of medicines every year. It is designed to incorporate a range of new technologies, such as the tracking and tracing of medicines to prevent counterfeit, and “smart packaging” to ensure more flexibility to adapt the production of medicines to patient demand.

The new packaging center represents an investment of EUR 63 million ($72 million) over the 2015-2018 period and is part of a wider EUR 1 billion ($1.1 billion) investment up to 2020, which further involves transforming the Darmstadt site into contemporary global headquarters, according to information from Merck KGaA.

Source: Merck KGaA