Contract pharmaceutical manufacturer Aspar Pharmaceuticals has recalled a batch of Boots Paracetamol 500mg Tablets due to an issue with the packaging.
The problem?
Well, believe it or not, the product was shipped with the correct carton, but the blister inside that contains the tablets was printed for another product, Boots Asprin.
The product inside the package was correct – at least they got something right.
With all the safeguards in place for the packaging of healthcare products, how on earth could such an obvious error pass through the multiple layers of quality assurance that are always in place?
Obviously, there will be a complete investigation into this embarrassing mistake, but one factor has to be that these products are not manufactured by Boots but instead outsourced to Aspar Pharmaceuticals Limited.
It wasn’t always this way—traditionally, Boots made and packaged its own products. In the mid-1970s, the company started production in a new factory specifically for tablets, Building D95, part of its campus in Beeston, near Nottingham.
I spent a lot of time in this facility in the late 1970s and into the 1980s. The company used our PPM labelers on its bottle packaging lines.
With a great team in place, the latest in packaging inspection technology and multiple product safety protocols, I can’t imagine that making a mistake like using packaging components from another product would happen. The D95 team ensured that the various products’ packaging materials were always segregated and handled correctly.
After manufacturing its own products for 130 years, Boots ended manufacturing with the closure of D10 (its liquid products plant). The D95 tablet plant is apparently now owned by Reckitt Benckiser, which uses the building as a blow moulding operation for plastic bottles.
Sometimes, you have to wonder if outsourcing manufacturing and giving up control is worth the cost savings.
