Recipharm plans major investment in coding capacity

Contract development and manufacturing organization Recipharm has said it will invest €40m in coding and serialization systems over the next three years.

The announcement comes in the wake of the publication of the delegated regulation, which sets a three-year deadline for the addition of serial numbers and temper evidence features on medicine packs sold in the EU.

The CDMO already manufactures serialized products for clients in markets including Turkey, Korea and China and says that its programme to introduce serialization capabilities across the company will be led by Staffan Widengren, who heads the corporate projects team at the company.

"We need to move this issue up the agenda for firms in Europe," said Widengren. To that end, Recipharm is setting up a steering committee in Europe to help clients "plan and implement changes that comply with pending regulatory requirements for drug serialization."

The industry-wide serialisation, aggregation and verification directive is expected to improve traceability of drugs, help in the fight against counterfeit products entering the supply chain and ultimately improve patient safety, says Recipharm.

However, the implementation of required changes to the 2D barcodes on all saleable drug items is set to require significant investment from the pharmaceutical industry, and the CDMO suggests some drugmakers "are behind in their preparations."