At the CPHI Shanghai exhibition last year, I met a professor from the Department of Chemistry of Sichuan University who wanted to introduce us a granular glue that can be heat-sealed with PP material (granular at room temperature, it melts after heating). There are still many PP glues on the market, mainly for heat sealing with PP containers. And because the material of PP is environmentally friendly and recyclable, it has become more popular than ever in the trend of green environmental protection in recent years, and its application in the food industry is also more extensive.

The field that this professor wants to apply is the pharmaceutical packaging material industry. He wants to replace the PVC material we are currently using for tablet and capsule packaging with PP material, and the corresponding heat-sealing glue for sealing aluminum foil should also be replaced with Corresponding to glue that can be heat-sealed with PP material. From an academic point of view, there is no problem at all, and it meets environmental protection standards. The number of PVC materials we use in the pharmaceutical packaging material industry every year is staggering. Some studies indicate that by 2025, the global consumption of PVC will reach nearly 60 million tons.

Since the high consumption of PVC and the environmental protection performance of PP have formed such a sharp contrast, is this feasible in actual use?

The huge application of PVC materials in the pharmaceutical packaging industry is largely due to the properties of the materials themselves. First of all, PVC materials are cheap and easy to obtain. In today's soaring prices, the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry has been under national control, maintaining price stability and lowering the prices of some high-priced drugs. For this reason, pharmaceutical companies will also strictly control the cost of their packaging materials. The price of PP material and its corresponding glue price are much higher than the price of PVC on the market now.

Secondly, PVC material can be made into rigid plastic, and its blister and brewing ability is much better than that of PP material. For two materials of the same thickness, PP is prone to bubble breakage after blister.

However, for some composite materials, such as cold-stamped aluminum, some manufacturers have replaced PVC with PP for material improvements. Improved from the original nylon/aluminum/PVC to nylon/aluminum/PP. However, this material has not been widely accepted and applied by manufacturers, so the demand for the material is still extremely low and cannot be put into mass production, because the machinery of the pharmaceutical factory also needs to be modified accordingly.

To sum up, although the upgrading of materials will conform to the needs and changes of the times, it takes a long period of thinking education and product performance improvement to completely replace PVC materials from the industry.