Building a melting tank for high-quality pharma glass tubing requires extraordinary skills. Despite the pandemic, a team of German and Chinese experts managed to complete the construction of the factory in record-breaking “China speed” of just 15 months.
“Of course, our glass stands at the very beginning of an ambitious value chain. But it´s one piece of the bigger picture: Turning the vision of “Healthy China 2030” into reality. We’re very proud that it also marks the first time that SCHOTT is melting glass in China,” said Dr. Frank Heinricht, Chairman of the Management Board of SCHOTT.
“As the most modern tubing production site worldwide, it is equipped with state-of-the-art manufacturing technology. Through our local glass production, we enable a faster and improved supply chain that will subsequently help to improve packaging quality,” added Dr. Patrick Markschläger, Executive Vice President of SCHOTT’s Business Unit Tubing. With the help of big data and artificial intelligence, each tube is inspected 100 percent based on the company’s perfeXion® process, which is also in place in SCHOTT’s other pharma tubing manufacturing sites.
The industry gold standard
Borosilicate glass, known under the SCHOTT brand name FIOLAX®, has been the preferred choice of material for pharmaceutical packaging since the company’s founder Otto Schott first developed it around 1890. The highly inert glass protects drugs from unwanted drug-container interactions, making it an ideal packaging material for life-saving drugs. More than 90 percent of all approved COVID-19 vaccines rely on SCHOTT’s glass tubing.
The manufacturing site will support the move away from the low borosilicate glass (so called 7.0 glass type) to the higher quality middle borosilicate glass (so called 5.0 glass type), which is already well established globally.