Deliverance in the new year will come encased in glass vials stored in cooled boxes. As all hopes hinge on the 1st wave of COVID-19 vaccines, it is the vials that will carry them and the specific storage options they will in turn demand that matter now. Even as life could not transform overnight and caution demands to continue with face masks and social exclusion, Indian businesses have upped the game in meeting the new demands for cold storage, glass vials and syringes.
For instance, a single of the major businesses in the cold storage space, Godrej Appliances, has not just begun supplies of cold storage options but is also working on newer items. The get started of the new year will imply Kamal Nandi and his group at Godrej Appliances would have completed half of their committed supplies of vaccine refrigerators to the Indian government. “We are manufacturing about 12,000 units for the ministry of health, government of India and about 50 per cent of the order will be completed by January and the remaining by March 2021,” says Kamal Nandi, small business head and executive vice president at Godrej Appliances, a big small business division of Godrej & Boyce. The shipping out started in November 2020 and will conclude by March 2021.
The order, worth Rs 95 crore that the Indian government placed in October 2020 is for “ice-lined refrigerators,” Nandi explains although speaking to FE Online, “maintain temperatures between 2 and 8 degrees centigrade. It is based on a very differentiated Sure Chill technology, licensed from the Sure Chill Company in the UK and ensures temperature control without the risk of vaccine freezing.” Most of the vaccines, require 2 to 8 degrees temperatures, like several if the COVID vaccines other than the likes of Pfizer and Moderna which storage at significantly reduced temperatures.
Typically, Nandi says, a 225 litre ice-lined refrigerator can retailer anyplace involving 40,000 and 50,000 vials based on the size of the vials. The government order is for 9,000 ice-lined refrigerators and 3,000 deep freezers which is storage at minus 25 degrees centigrade, which is beneficial for overall health centres for freezing the ice packs required in the vaccine outreach programme across areas.
This is the 1st large order for the organization from the government of India although it has been in this space considering that 2015 and supplying these vaccine refrigerators to a number of state governments and even exporting them so fat to about 36 nations. In addition to this big order from the Indian government, the organization is also executing an order from UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) of 3,000 such ice-lined refrigerators for its Indian requirement.
Plus, he says, “we are also working on building capabilities and capacities for manufacturing freezers to handle vaccines that require temperatures as low as minus 70 degrees centigrade.” That item, he says, “is under testing right now and once those results are out and hopefully if we get it cleared in January then the product could get launched.” Pfizer vaccine demands storage at minus 70 degrees centigrade and Moderna at a slightly greater temperature. Where as the AstraZeneca, Novavax and other individuals would require the 2 to 8 degrees temperatures.
The order from the Indian government although could meet the demands for the COVID vaccines, these refrigerators could also locate use for other non-COVID vaccines as well that fall beneath the India’s elaborate Expanded Programme on Immunisation (or EPI).
Similarly, in the space for glass vials required for the vaccines, businesses have been expanding capacities and ramping up supplies. One of the major players in this space is SCHOTT Kaisha which started as Kaisha (name derived from the more than 3 decade partnership involving Kairus Dadachanji and Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry).
Speaking to FE Online, Kairus Dadachandji, says, “we are well equipped to address the needs for vials and already have requirements from various companies already in place and they are all well covered.” Kaisha supplies vials to a number of businesses, like to say Serum Institute, which is generating the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine and has applied to the Indian regulator for emergency use authorization, which could be anticipated more than the subsequent handful of days.
Calling his organization, “by far the largest manufacturers in India both in terms of volume and value and with a 60 per cent marketshare in vials,” Dadachandji says, just right after the pandemic hit and work on new vaccines started, the organization went ahead and expanded its capacity in Gujarat to manufacture vials. “We invested Rs 100 crore to manufacture 300 million additional vials taking the total to 1.5 billion vials in a year capacity with each vial being able to carry 10 doses of the vaccine.”
He says his organization has an edge in the technologies at its facilities in Gujarat “specially with respect to inspection of the vials that is not available even with some of the big players of the world. Every vial leaving our plants undergoes 300 shots by cameras and this is billions of pieces and they are all inspected for spots or cracks or black spots.”
He says, this is essential simply because it is not excellent adequate to just say you manufacture USP form 1 vial but it has to be backed by excellent top quality simply because the vials require to include a life-saving liquid.
Pre-pandemic, he says, the organization had a total capacity to manufacture 1.2 billion vials per annum and now it is up to 1.5 billion vials a year. In addition to this, it also tends to make syringes, ampoules and cartridges taking the total production of all, like the vials to a total of about 3 billion pieces a year across 4 plants, like a new plant at Baddi in Himachal Pradesh for ampoules and vials with an more Rs 50 crore investment.
“We are geared up,” sums up Dr Swati Piramal, vice chairperson of the Piramal Group, which has Piramal Glass, its glass packaging options organization that tends to make glass vials on how their organization has responded to the new demands for vaccines. This could augur properly for it is not them alone but a number of other individuals – Hindustan Syringe & Medical Devices, Borosil and other individuals have been gearing up and acquiring orders each from inside the nation and from abroad.