Jones Healthcare Group: Solving Complex Packaging Issues

Source: Contract Pharma

The roots of Jones Healthcare Group started in 1882, when Henry J. Jones and Frank Lawson created Lawson & Jones Inc. to provide apothecary packaging to pharmacists. Jones then established Jones Box and Label in 1920 to expand into the pharmaceutical market, launching the Jones Healthcare Group we know today.

Over the last century, Jones has developed deep expertise in regulated packaging in a range of health and wellness sectors, while responding to evolving market needs. Jones specializes in packaging components and services across the value chain through four business units:

• Pharmacy & Medication Adherence unit provides pharmacy medication dispensing packaging for patients.
• Packaging Servicesunit provides primary packaging and filling services for bottles, blisters, and pouches.
• Cartons & Labels unit provides folding carton and pressure-sensitive label packaging components (this area of Jones’ business is the focus of this article).

When it comes to packaging components, Jones focuses on health and wellness markets including prescription and over the counter (OTC) pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, personal care, and medical device markets. The firm supports a range of pharmaceutical brands directly, as well as contract manufacturing and packaging organizations.

In this article, speaking from the viewpoint of Jones’ packaging components business unit, Cameron Bramwell, Vice President, Customer Strategy for Cartons & Labels at Jones Healthcare Group, talks about the challenges facing their CMO and CPO customers, and how Jones is there to help.

Contract Pharma: What are some key packaging challenges confronting CMOs and CPOs today?

Cameron Bramwell: One consistent theme we’ve heard from our new customers and prospects is that the world of packaging and the packaging supply chain is constantly changing. The best packaging engineers are constantly looking for a solid, reliable team for support in designing their folding cartons and also in helping their label lines run consistently. It’s challenging for purchasing to find the best price and to satisfy production teams, who need orders in full and on time. While many companies have come and gone, the team at Jones Healthcare has been meeting these challenges for over a hundred years.

More recently contract manufacturers and packagers are struggling to manage fragile and complex supply chains in all areas of their business, including packaging components.

At Jones Healthcare, we are acutely aware and understand these challenges and their implications—not only because we’ve supported contract manufacturing organizations (CMOs) and contract packaging organizations (CPOs) for many years, but also because we have a sister CPO business unit that experiences these dynamics firsthand. Some carton and label companies are not accustomed to the fast pace of servicing contract organizations. We service our own Packaging Services site, so our team lives and breathes meeting demands for contract packaging.

What we’ve found is this: products and services like packaging could be less costly at the line-item or invoice level, but in the long run they can cost much more if a supplier can’t deliver on-time, in-full and with the exceptional level of quality required. What’s more, if significant resource time is required to manage a packaging supplier or the packaging supply chain, you must ask yourself what that’s costing you.

CP: How has the market and supply chain changed through the pandemic?

Bramwell: As we know, the pandemic created a volatile supply chain full of shortages. Pharmaceutical brands experienced rapid market shifts and changing demand never seen before, which created a ripple effect. Contract manufacturers struggled to keep up with demand, in large part due to issues obtaining the components and materials needed to execute orders. The challenge was compounded by an overall increase in demand for healthcare products.

As we emerge from the pandemic, businesses are thinking about the supply chain differently. There is an increased level of importance on diversifying supply chains, contingency planning and focusing on suppliers that make it a priority to handle volatility, manage inventory and truly take the stress out of outsourced areas like packaging. Removing obstacles, responding quickly, and expediting the process has become exceptionally valuable in a supplier. In addition, many companies are re-evaluating their domestic versus overseas purchasing choices.

One of the customers who started working with us a year into the pandemic told me, “There used to be risk in trying a new supplier, but right now it feels like there’s more risk in not knowing enough suppliers!” This customer had used the same vendors for 20 years and when they all started to fall behind on orders, he didn’t know the folding carton space well enough to find the perfect vendor for him. I encourage anyone who is buying packaging to get to know the different players and entertain the idea of qualifying a new vendor to increase your supply chain security. We’ve proven that we can be a preferred primary vendor for cartons and labels to many long-standing customers.

Outside view of Jones’ Page Street head office in London, Ontario.

CP: What is Jones Healthcare doing to meet the demands and challenges of today’s market and help ease the pressures facing CMOs and CPOs?

Bramwell: Since more customers are looking for dependable vendors like Jones Healthcare and also onshoring their packaging spend, we’ve made significant capital investment to increase throughput for both cartons and labels.

From a service standpoint, it’s really about finding ways to remove the noise from the CMO/CPO supply chain to make it easier to respond to variables and dynamic market demand. At Jones Healthcare, we help do this through:

1. Flexible scheduling—we can accommodate changing needs and adjust order timing for our customers.

2. Inventory management—we manage inventory, helping to understand what packaging is needed and when through our extensive vendor-managed inventory programs.

3. Quality assurance—on-time, in-full delivery, exceeding the quality standards pharmaceutical brands require. We’ve provided healthcare packaging for over a century, and this is really our expertise.

4. In-house graphics support and prepress services can help with material selection, art generation, structural design for cartons, and many more services that complement contract organizations.

5. Continued investment—we continue to add new equipment and technology to expand capacity and capability,

CP: What makes Jones’ Cartons & Labels business unique from the competition?

Bramwell: Jones Healthcare is such a unique business because of our combination of packaging services, pharmacy and medication adherence packaging, cartons, and labels manufacturing, and finally our innovation team.

We draw on the expertise of our different business units to help each other understand the challenges that we all face in packaging healthcare products. In the end, it’s all about the patient experience and improving the lives of the people seeking healthcare products.

As an example, we were at the forefront of the digital packaging revolution with the launch of our award-winning CpaX™ connected packaging platform. With the rise of intelligent, digital packaging and smartphone integration with retail packaging, our innovation team used our packaging expertise to develop printable electronics and NFC packaging platforms to unlock some amazing potential. Looking into the future of clinical trials and medication adherence, our team also developed connected medication adherence cards that detect when medications are removed, track adherence and send reminders to patients and caregivers. What makes Jones Healthcare Group unique is our knowledge of what you need today and what else might be possible for the future.

When it comes to supporting CMOs and CPOs specifically, we make it a priority to integrate with their business models as well as their operations and packaging lines. In other words, we not only understand their business challenges, but also their technical packaging challenges.

CP: What are your customers’ key concerns when partnering on projects?

Bramwell: One concern I’m hearing from buyers is a need for communication and flexibility. We have accounts move to Jones who’ve felt lost in the shuffle, or that they haven’t been prioritized elsewhere. We do our best to actively communicate orders, schedule dates, and work in progress with regular reports. I think communication is critical because a purchase order isn’t just labels or cartons, it’s a piece of the puzzle our customers depend on to satisfy patient demand. I like the word “partner” in your question because we do see ourselves as part of our customer’s teams. For example, our QA Manager is managing the quality of your packaging, our logistics team is finding the best way to ship your cartons to the production site.

Sustainability options are also a rapidly growing concern. Our customers want to know what we’re doing to operate more sustainably and create more sustainable packaging options. Sustainability is certainly an ongoing journey and we have made strong progress by incorporating sustainability criteria into decision-making and product development, while launching of a series of targets. Our progress is outlined in detail in our most recent sustainability report.

CP: What are the major challenges component providers like Jones face when trying to meet the demands of CMOs and CPOs?

Bramwell: We have been managing a challenging raw materials supply chain through the pandemic, including paperboard and label stock shortages. We’ve managed to pull through those challenges for our customers and we are now experiencing a more stable supply chain.

CP: What are some recent business highlights?

Bramwell: We’ve invested $30 million into new equipment across the business since 2020. From a packaging components perspective, this includes a Koenig & Bauer Rapida 106 eight-color folding carton press, a Bobst Novacut 106 ER die-cutter, a KOR VR4-330 label rewind machine and a Gallus Labelmaster 440. The Labelmaster’s 17” label platform creates extra throughput, plus increased speed—a game changer for our CMO customers that run high-volume products.

As part of our sustainability focus, we’ve invested in EcoImpact COMPASS product lifecycle technology that measures the environmental footprint of packaging throughout its useful life. This in turn allows us to understand packaging at the material level, prioritize areas of concern and structure the best solutions for client brands. We also recently joined the Sustainable Medicines Partnership as a founding collaborator, collaborating with organizations around the world to reduce medicines-related waste through packaging digitization, circularity, and medication adherence.

When it comes to our team at Jones Healthcare, we’re proud to continue to grow significantly with new talent and expertise, while at the same time celebrating many colleagues who have worked with us—and our clients—for 20, 30 and even 40 years. We warmly welcomed 165 new colleagues in 2022, while celebrating 36 colleagues with over five years of service. Led by the fourth generation of the Jones family and with many multi-generation team members, a family culture that puts people first has always been a part of who we are. With this, we were honored to receive the 2023 WILL Award recognizing our commitment to supporting newcomers and embracing diversity and inclusion.