Is cold formed blister pack the best option for me?

Cold-formed blister packaging, also known as hard double aluminum packaging, is packaged by sealing with PTP aluminum foil (top/lidding) and cold forming foil (referred to as "CFF", bottom foil). Because this type of packaging looks very beautiful and has good effects, it is used by more and more pharmaceutical companies to package their products. But the price of this packaging material is also relatively high, so some customers have asked: Is cold-formed blister packaging the best choice for me?

How did cold-formed blister come about?

Cold-formed blister packaging, like other pharmaceutical packaging, originated in food packaging applications. In the 1970s, the earliest cold-formed blister prototypes were used to package jams. Then in the mid-1970s, Bayer teamed up with some material scientists to find a suitable packaging for aspirin tablets. At that time, the bottom application structure they chose was PE/ALU/OPA, which is a packaging material similar to tear-off film. It was not until the end of the 1970s that the cold-formed blister evolved into our current structure of OPA/ALU/PVC, and was well temperature-free heat-sealed with PTP aluminum foil.

Where is cold aluminum good?

Compared with the most common PVC material, cold aluminum is an upgraded version of the packaging, and it has all the properties of PVC (easy to form, with barrier properties). For cold aluminum, because of the properties of aluminum foil, the barrier effect of the material is 60 times that of PVC, and the stability of the packaged drugs is much better than that of PVC.

Secondly, the sealing of cold aluminum and PTP aluminum foil does not require heating. For temperature-sensitive drugs, the temperature of PVC brewing and heating and sealing will affect the quality of the packaged drugs.

What are the disadvantages of cold aluminum?

The biggest disadvantage of cold aluminum is the price. Since cold aluminum is a composite material, its price is much higher than that of ordinary PVC. Cold-formed blisters require more packaging material than PVC blisters to pack the same number and size of tablets or capsules. This is mainly due to the limitations of the cold forming process, which uses pins to press cavity geometries into thin aluminum sheets. Aluminum cannot form angles close to 90 degrees, resulting in larger cavities and blister cards than necessary. Additionally, cold forming is slower to produce than thermoforming, requires dedicated feeders, increases inspection complexity due to the opacity of the card, and higher secondary due to larger packaging Packaging and logistics costs.

What kind of products are suitable for cold forming packaging?

So what kind of product needs to choose this type of packaging, mainly determined by the characteristics and added value of the product. For drugs that are easy to absorb moisture, easy to oxidize, need to be protected from light, sensitive to temperature and have high added value, we recommend using cold-formed packaging materials. If you are still hesitant about the choice of packaging, you can contact us to provide professional advice on pharmaceutical packaging materials.