Standard Medical Pouches vs. Custom: Your Healthcare Packaging Priorities

A broad range of packaging solutions for healthcare applications exist today on the market. To choose the most effective materials and design, it’s important to understand your objectives. Some applications require technically complex and unique designs, while other initiatives seek to minimize costs and/or lead times. Through productive collaboration with the right manufacturer, you can find the best choices to achieve your goals.

The route you choose requires critical thinking and assessments. You must consider the cost and feasibility of the packaging as well as how it will affect the end users. There will be differences in the design, production, and distribution processes, and each individual package must meet every regulation and safety protocol regardless.

Here’s what to consider when determining how to design your pouches.

Key Factors in Deciding Standard vs. Custom

Product Specifications

Each healthcare product must consistently perform to exact specifications. Factors such as barrier properties, protection against contamination or damage, convenience for the customer, and material recycle-readiness must be considered when determining the ideal packaging.

Medical devices that benefit from the flexible packaging pouches provide come in all shapes and sizes. In some cases, a customized pouch must be made to accommodate the dimensions, weight, and delicate components of a specialized device. If, however, you have flexibility in the design parameters, taking advantage of more commonly used materials and sizes can reduce costs and lead times.

Supply Chain Efficiency and Stability

If a more streamlined supply chain is important to your company, and if standard pouches will give your devices the sterility and protection they need, then that’s a path you might want to take. Standard pouches use the most common materials, which can be delivered by medical pouch manufacturers such as Amcor quickly and reliably.

This doesn’t mean that a fully customized pouch will be a long, arduous process. To ensure timely custom solutions, it’s beneficial to work with experienced medical pouch manufacturers that can meet timelines without compromising quality. But it’s important to understand that custom pouches can have unique attributes that add costs and complexity.

Cost

In some cases, the use of standard packaging may cost less than custom options due to the overall simpler process, easily accessible materials, and generally quicker timeline. But custom packages can sometimes result in desirable cost savings of their own.

Even if a standard pouch works for your product, it’s possible you could be using more material than is necessary. It’s possible that you might get a better value customizing to the exact shape and size of your product, cutting out any excess material use — which also reduces your waste and your shipping costs.

Often, though, it’s a tradeoff of customizing for performance and standardization for saving money.

Amcor’s Guidance

One big takeaway from this: There isn’t an all-encompassing right or wrong medical pouch to use. It depends on the product itself, and that’s why it’s important to turn to a packaging partner that understands what your product needs and which materials will serve it best.

Amcor has extensive experience providing custom and standard packaging solutions depending on the needs of healthcare industry customers. With R&D teams at our global innovation centers, unmatched industry expertise, and superior machinery and materials, Amcor works diligently to find the right packaging solution tailored to you.

At Amcor, we have a broad portfolio of designs and materials available to provide standard pouches. But we never shy away from a challenge in creating new solutions for even the toughest medical applications.

There’s a lot that goes into which type of packaging to use. One important consideration is the packaging material’s sterility. Click the link below to learn more and access our helpful eBook, The Insider’s Guide to Sterile Barrier Packaging.