Austro-Spanish joint venture for pharmaceutical packaging

Alpla is expanding its presence in the global market for pharmaceutical packaging by establishing a joint venture with Inden Pharma. Alpla, the international specialist in plastic packaging and recycling, and the internationally renowned Spanish pharmaceutical packaging company Inden Pharma, are starting a long-term partnership for the certified production of bottles, containers and closures in clean rooms, starting in March. The joint venture includes two Alplapharma production sites in Greece (Koropi) and Poland (Żyrardów) and the two Spanish plants of Inden Pharma in Ibi, north of Alicante, as well as a jointly built fifth plant in Germany (Markdorf), which is scheduled to start production in June.

“We combine global presence with high standards and technology leadership. Together, we are even closer to our customers and are expanding our range of high-quality, cost-effective and sustainable packaging solutions,” said Philipp Lehner, CEO of Alpla. Since entering the fast-growing market of pharmaceutical packaging in 2016, ALPLA has continuously expanded into new countries, technologies and product categories. Inden Pharma is also focused on strong growth. In the last four years, the company has tripled its sales to reach 30.5 million euros in 2022. Inden Pharma annually sells more than 550 million containers in 35 countries on 5 continents.

Around 800 million packaging products will be produced in the first year at the five jointly operated facilities. The standard products offered by Inden Pharma will be integrated into the joint catalogue of Alplapharma and Inden Pharma products, reaching an offer of more than 150 articles. It is also planned to expand the business to other places outside of Europe in the future, such as India, the USA or Central and South America.

“Our international customers benefit from a greater variety of plants, proximity, high flexibility as well as the service and quality in deliveries that has been habitual in recent years. It is quite a challenge, not only for Inden Pharma, but for the entire organisation of the joint venture, since our objective is to achieve leadership in the pharmaceutical plastic packaging market in the next five years,” explains Juan Guillem González, owner and CEO of Inden Pharma.

“We bring together our strengths and distribution networks, use the most modern injection and extrusion blow moulding techniques, and can rely on our long-standing recycling expertise for future developments”, declared Walter Knes, Managing Director of Alplapharma, emphasizing the importance of technology and know-how transfer.