Medica supplies cartons for expanding herbal medicine brand

Medica Packaging, the specialist healthcare packaging supplier within Benson Group, has supplied licensed herbal medicine provider Bio-Health with packaging for its expanding line of products.

Bio-Health supplies herbal medicinal products, as well as vitamin and mineral food supplements, and has seen a dramatic expansion of its herbal medicinal product business. It now has four of its products on the shelves of some 90 Tesco stores across the UK: Periagna, Salvian, Valdrian and Goodnight.

Each product has a unique color coding, and the Benson Group color management system helped fulfill the client’s requirements for color consistency across the range.

In addition, all the elements of the packaging at Medica are produced under one roof, including the project management of cartons, and printing of patient information leaflets (PILs) and labels.

Vic Perfitt, managing director of Bio-Health, said: ‘These distinctive colors are used on the box, the PIL and the label. The aim is to make it simple for our end users to recognize the right information leaflet for the right product.

‘Because all three elements are printed by one company they are able to ensure with 100 percent accuracy that the correct Pantone color is used – even though the printing processes for each element of the packaging are different.’

In 2011, stringent government legislation was introduced in the UK for traditional herbal remedies, a move which Bio-Health backed.

‘It was most definitely in our interest,’ added Perfitt. ‘The market was being dragged down with too many cowboys coming into the sector. They were using cheap ingredients to undercut our prices, but providing products that did not live up to customers’ expectations. It gave the whole herbal medicines industry a bad name.

‘We fought hard to get the government to introduce legislation into the sector, [and] products now have to be licensed.’

Licensing includes inspections for all key suppliers, and Perfitt said: ‘In the same way as standard pharmaceutical product suppliers, we have to audit our major suppliers, such as Medica Packaging, and write a report detailing how they adhere to the correct procedures in their business.’

As Medica Packaging produces cartons, leaflets and labels from one production facility, Bio-Health only needed to conduct one site audit for all three packaging elements.

‘Medica passed all of the tests for good pharmaceutical manufacturing practice,’ said Perfitt. ‘It is able to tick all of the right boxes as far as quality control procedures and quality assurance is concerned.’

Medica Packaging has also helped Bio-Health future-proof its packaging against further legislative changes, such as the requirement for Braille on not only the carton, but also the printed label.

Perfitt said: ‘In our opinion it is likely that this will become a legal requirement in the near future, but it just makes sense anyway. Blind and partially sighted customers need this information – why would we not want to include it?’

Medica Packaging sales director Mark Bradley said: ‘Bio-Health is at the forefront of the traditional herbal remedies market. It is a pleasure to work with such a professional company in this fast-growing market.

‘Medica Packaging is at hand to guide traditional herbal remedy suppliers through the new packaging legislation so they too can enjoy a share of this emerging sector. The legislation that Bio-Health was very keen to see introduced ensures that both product and packaging has to be of the highest quality.’

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