Imagining Pharma

According to Thomas Fricke (Commercial Director at IMA Pharma) the present and the future of the sector is marked by the availability of digital technologies that will expand business opportunities, but also by packaging solutions that will protect people, products and the environment.

di Luciana Guidotti

It’s there for all to see. The health emergency caused by Covid-19 has changed our lives, redefining social and economic canons. However, it has also led to a reconsideration of the issues related to everyone’s health, with a renewed awareness that collective well-being depends on the ability of science to find shared and, above all, sharable answers.

Over the past twelve months - and even in the most dramatic moments - the automated machinery industry has contributed diligently and uninterruptedly to ensuring the safety and accessibility of medicines with state-of-the-art technologies.

Fresh from his appointment as commercial director at IMA Pharma, Thomas Fricke gives us some general thoughts on the industry.

In IMA since 1992, engineer Thomas Fricke has held various management positions in the pharma sector, working in Germany and Italy, demonstrating great ability to adapt to different cultures. Initially sales manager at IMA Germany, he became its General Director, and in 2011 he became Sales & Marketing Director of the Pharma Packaging solutions hub in Italy. Today he is Commercial Director of IMA Pharma.

Let’s start with the facts, i.e. IMA budget/turnover 2020 in the pharma sector and forecast for 2021

The consolidated turnover of the IMA Group in 2020 was about 1.5 billion euros. Half of this turnover was generated with customers from the Pharma sector; in particular, IMA delivered machines and lines from their specialized Divisions IMA Active, IMA Life, IMA Safe, IMA BFB and also from IMA Automation. This state of affairs allows us to look forward to 2021 with optimism and we believe to improve this good result.

On a global scale, what were the most dynamic markets last year and what are the ones today? 

During the pandemic year 2020 such dynamism cannot be easily allocated to markets or geographical areas like in the past. The investments were higher in the area of vaccine filling and packaging lines and also in the production of facial masks against the virus. IMA made big efforts to react immediately to the demands of our pharmaceutical customers for the supply of these relevant lines. It is worth mentioning the Fast-Track projects for short-term delivery that IMA put in place, connected to the Covid problems. Due to the focus on these type of lines, now we see again an increase of the standard packaging lines for Pharma and also for the Cosmetic market.

About the customer service, how did you deal with the limitations due to the pandemic?

The first thing that IMA did, was to organise the whole company in a way to avoid infections and infected persons in the facilities. Being considered as a system relevant for the supply chain, we took great care about this issue and we remained always in production. That means that also the Customer Service from Bologna was always active and shown how valuable our big international service network is. With our service staff we were able to keep existing lines running, but not only: we even installed new lines in China during this difficult period with local engineers and also with the help of our digital tools. By using remote connections and hololenses we were able to support our staff at the customer’s site from our Headquarter offices.

IMA Life’s complete aseptic line for the processing of vaccines.

Always talking about customer service, what did you learn from this experience? And what are the next steps for the future?

The learning is that it is obvious that we need both systems, very skilled specialists from the Headquarter combined with local staff in the countries. Furthermore, we are pushing also more for Digital support with remote status analysis of the machines, remote support and other intelligent tools.

What are the main technological trends and what requests have you registered / satisfied in the last year?

The use of robotic solutions in all the areas of packaging is a continuous trend. In the past, these systems were often used for avoiding lifting of heavy items (palletizers) and for working in dangerous areas. Nowadays, robots can be found everywhere because of their flexibility for different products and formats, e.g. the loading of products and packaging material on the lines, the pick&place of products into the packaging but also for labelling and assembling.

In the post-Covid era, once the emergency of vaccines is over, how the pharma market machinery could change?

All the machines will be much more digitally connected, between themselves in line, to the customer company network and also to the supplier for improved service and analytics. Some big pharma companies will focus more on the high value sterile products and personalized medicines. For these products new flexible solutions are required with lower speed and higher flexibility in order to produce small batches. The solid dose oral dosage forms will be transferred in increasing numbers to OEM contract producers and packers. After Covid, everybody will come back to focus again more on sustainable materials and environmental friendly solutions.