German glass manufacturing giant SCHOTT AG is supporting the world’s fight against COVID-19 with vials capable of holding up to 2 billion vaccination doses. The pharma glass and packaging specialist has reached agreements with leading pharmaceutical companies, including key players in India. The global agreements became effective last month and first vials are already being delivered to companies in Asia, North America and Europe.

In India, SCHOTT’s 50-50 joint venture, SCHOTT KAISHA is supplying vials for COVID-19 vaccines to Serum Institute (India) and several other players. The joint venture operates four manufacturing facilities in the country located in Jambusar and Umarsadi in Gujarat, Daman, and Baddi in Himachal Pradesh. In addition, the company produces the pharmaceutical glass tubing for the packaging itself at its global sites including one in Jambusar in Gujarat.

The specialty glass pioneer is ideally positioned to meet the challenging demand situation since it had started an investment program into its pharma business of 1 billion USD in 2019 already. In India, this includes a three-digit million-euro number for new Borosilicate glass melting tanks, and for its packaging operations an entirely new production site as well as new modules and lines.

All of SCHOTT’s 20 production sites for pharma glass and packaging are validated by regulatory bodies and pharma companies. This means that additional capacities can be used immediately without further regulatory efforts. Even before the expansions, SCHOTT already produced more than 11 billion pharma containers globally for life-saving drugs per annum, of which a nine-digit figure is manufactured locally in India.

“SCHOTT KAISHA has been known to scale up extremely fast in order to meet customer demands over the past decade, which is also evident from its two new facilities in Umarsadi and Baddi.Thanks to our strong supply chain and support from SCHOTT’s global sites, we are in a very strong position to meet our customer’s current and anticipated requirements. We are confident that we can quickly expand our production capabilities further, in case demand arises”, shared Rishad Dadachanji, Director, SCHOTT KAISHA.

More importantly, all major pharma companies and many other players in the market have been processing the company’s vials on their fill and finish lines for many years. “Hence, no time consuming adaptations of fill and finish equipment will slow down vaccine distribution. As time is a luxury the industry doesn’t have at the moment, it is common sense to rely on tried-and-true packaging solutions,” Dadachanji said.

Background information on Borosilicate glass
SCHOTT is one of the world’s leading experts in the production of type-I Borosilicate glass, the gold standard for drug packaging for over a century. The material is best suited for potential COVID-19 vaccines and existing medications, as it avoids the interactions between containers and the drug formulation, that can limit its effectiveness.