Sanner is a world leader in effervescent and desiccant packaging

Pharmaceutical and medical packaging specialist Sanner GmbH is in the process of expanding production at its second European manufacturing unit in Budapest, Hungary.

The old-established family-owned company, headquartered in Bensheim, Germany, is upgrading and optimising the Hungarian machinery park to allow more capacity for new products.

Its local offshoot Sanner Hungária Kft. expects to provide additional injection moulding capacity soon at the site for a wider range of packaging solutions and will start to create new jobs at the plant, the group revealed.

Sanner Hungária Kft, established in 1995, works closely with the main European production site at Bensheim in western Germany and has achieved annual output worth around €5m. Two thirds of the Budapest plant production represents export sales to other European countries.

Sanner, which makes a range of medical and healthcare related packaging and medtech, pharmaceutical and diagnostics components, is a world leader in effervescent and desiccant packaging.

Last year, the company, already a top supplier of desiccant containers, strengthened its global position in packaging for effervescent products by acquiring Kirchheim, Germany-based Plastina Holding, parent of Jaco. It specialises in producing decorated and plain plastic tubes for effervescent tablets.

Sanner now intends to manufacture its ‘AdCap’ desiccant capsules - used to protect tablets and other sensitive packaging contents from deteriorating in a container - at its Budapest site as well as at Bensheim.

Other changes planned for the Hungarian plant include extending the automated, camera-based final (product) inspection in order to increase efficiency in quality management, the company said.

“All these steps strengthen the position of the Hungarian site within the Sanner group,” declared Volker Pfitzenreiter, head of production Europe at Sanner.

“Due to the significant restructuring and optimization process, we are currently also looking for new colleagues (potential employees), who want to become part of the Sanner team in Budapest,” the executive added.

Sanner, formed in 1894 and now run by the fourth generation of its founding family, operates a third manufacturing plant at Kunshan in Jiangsu province of China. In 2016, the firm recorded annual turnover worth €64m.