West scales up Waterford plant in response to COVID-19 demand

West Pharmaceutical Services has scaled up its Waterford Ireland plant’s working schedules in response to a big surge in customer demand as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

Waterford will supply millions of rubber vial stoppers to over a dozen global customers, that could be used to package over a billion vaccine doses in multi-dose vials, as part of the COVID-19 vaccines programme in 2021. The plant has doubled its workforce to meet the new demand, with the company now employing over 900 team members across Ireland. 

Mr Don O’Callaghan, VP European operations, said West’s NovaPure products, as well as fluoropolymer-coated stoppers, made by both West and partner, Daikyo Seiko, meet the high industry standards for packaging sensitive molecules and have an outstanding track record of quality and reliability. 

O’Callaghan said: “We are committed to doing our part to provide for the large-scale manufacture of high-quality components required to serve customer needs for the delivery of a safe, effective COVID-19 vaccine. This has resulted in growing our global workforce, expanding facility and equipment resources and shifting to 24/7 operating schedules at several sites to address the demand for components associated with COVID-19.”

Through these times, vaccine developers have trusted West as a partner to help protect their sensitive biomolecules. West is also supplying primary packaging components for therapeutics used to treat COVID-19, as well as critical components that are included in some of the diagnostic kit products that are being used to detect COVID-19.

O’Callaghan added: “We have met these high expectations through our ability to flex our operations within our global and European network to meet supply needs. These customers were seeking components to support the development work, clinical trials, and potential post-approval launches, and our sites in Germany, Serbia, France and Ireland are working closely together to balance production at a European level in order to ensure we can offer the best possible response to our customers. We are also committed to scaling production to meet their future volume requests.”

The plant has been commercially operational since 2018 as a West global centre of excellence for its advanced manufacturing network. The 20,500 square metre facility, situated on a 44-acre campus, produces West’s elastomeric laminate sheeting, which is used to package insulin for use in pen injectors. It also produces finishing for components, including stoppers and plungers, produced at other West facilities around the world. These services, designed to mitigate the risk of potential contamination and compatibility issues with packaging components, include pharmaceutical washing (Westar RS components), Envision verification, steam sterilisation (Westar RU components), and flexible packaging offerings.