Industrial Process News is proud to announce that pharma serialization specialist advanco – which has now serialised over two billion units of medication – has received the Serialisation Company of the Year award.
“Everyone at advanco is thrilled to be selected,” said Alf Goebel, advanco CEO. “Not only does receiving a prestigious award mark an important endorsement by our peers, it comes at an exciting time in the ongoing evolution and development of advanco.
“Winning this award recognises both the hard work that the team has put in, and the strong, future business opportunities for advanco.”
Indeed, the future is looking bright for advance, despite recent challenges resulting from the COVID19 pandemic. The lockdown forced the company to re-evaluate its working practices, but these changes are now embedded into the company’s working DNA, benefiting from investment in the very latest technology and the implementation of a much more streamlined working approach.
Advanco recently announced a ground-breaking partnership with former Bosch packaging giant Syntegon. This partnership is already seen as being of great importance to the overall pharmaceutical serialisation sector, opening-up the rigid nature of the serialisation track & trace supply chain. It combines the strength of advanco’s leading software site manager system, known as ARC, which handles the serialisation and aggregation processes, with Syntegon’s high-end machines for packaging pharmaceutical products and drugs.
This development will bring tremendous value to pharmaceutical companies by significantly lowering the total overall cost and preventing a lock-in effect, allowing vendors to choose different machines from different suppliers.
Advanco has successfully adapted to the COVID19 world. Technology has played a key part in how the company has been conducting business, with virtual client meetings, team meetings, and even conducting customer projects and implementations spanning different continents and time-zones now being the norm.
“As you would expect with a company operating in the pharmaceutical track & trace sector, we have access to some of the latest technology available. So, while the last few months have been challenging, we have been able to carry on with business pretty much as usual, said Alf Goebel, advanco CEO.”
Key to advanco’s offering is its ARC software, a serialisation packaging solution for Track-and-Trace that is the gateway to the national databases used for verification. ARC is used by over 35 customers around the globe at more than 50 sites, controlling over 350 package lines.
The entire solution is built to and complies with strict international regulatory standards and ensures companies comply with global legislation (such as EU Hub, MDLP, Turkish MoH), including all special functionalities like Russian Cryptocode or US DSCSA requirements on the shop floor and in the warehouse.
ARC has the largest interface portfolio in the industry and is designed to prevent counterfeits in the pharmaceutical industry by focusing on product identification in the supply chain. Integrating packaging lines and enterprise serialisation repositories, it is created for companies to utilise multiple line management systems, simplify integration and enhance flexibility, and it can adapt to a wide range of packaging line technologies and production management systems.
Integration across control and enterprise levels enables ARC to function as a centralised hub for managing serialisation data and facilitating product traceability across the entire supply chain.
From an internal point of view, advanco is also working to move its entire solution into the cloud, and it is adapting to new technologies, such as blockchain.
“It is vital that we remain ahead of the curve internally, so we are always looking to adopt the latest technology and ways of working, to enable our clients to work with us in the most efficient manner possible, and also to allow us to work in the most streamlined way that we can,” said Alf Goebel. There have also been some exciting recent structural developments for advanco. Earlier in the year, the company was acquired by Parabellum Investments, led by Founder and CEO, Rami Cassis. Parabellum Investments is a privately owned, international investment firm which acquires midmarket firms, with core strengths in its leadership and the unique combination of exceptional M&A and operational skills.
With so many successes on which to build, advanco has some exciting plans coming up. Rami Cassis, Founder and CEO of Parabellum Investments, said: “advanco is looking to take track & trace serialisation, which is now quite rightly viewed as an essential tool to protect patients against falsified and dangerous drugs and medicine, and show how it can be an integral part of other sectors.
“The pharmaceutical sector could be blazing a trail for other industries. For example, food track & trace serialisation would technically allow any outbreaks of food poisoning to be dealt with immediately, as the source of all manufacturing could be spotted in an instant. It could also be used in the fight against counterfeiting in most manufacturing sectors, not just the pharmaceutical industry.”
The need to prevent counterfeiting in pharmaceuticals is even more pertinent in the current climate.
“It is predicted that 10% of pharma products worldwide are counterfeit, with British researchers estimating that the death toll caused as a result could increase to 10 million people by 2050. Already, the global counterfeit drug market exceeds $75bn. And with the world scrambling to create a COVID-19 vaccine, these figures are set to explode over the coming years,” said Alf Goebel.
Therefore, the need for a watertight, reliable supply chain has never been greater. That is why the services offered by advanco, especially with the recent partnership and structural developments the company has announced, will remain of vital importance and will be in great demand as the world moves on from COVID-19.
