When we think of pharmaceutical packaging, blister packing is the most striking word in our minds. Blister Packing is the most extensively used packing for unit dosage forms. In this article, we will learn how blister packing is done and the advantages of blister packing in the pharmaceutical industry.

Blister Packing has good advantages like offering environmental protection and giving a good appearance to the user. In general blister package is made by heat softening of thermoplastic film and by use of a vacuum drawn into mold to give shape and allowed to cool down. After cooling the molded sheet is sent to a filling station where tablets get one into each cavity and heat sealed with a lidding foil necessary details are printed on the blister-like manufacturing date, expiry date, company details, product details, and composition of each tablet.

Types of blister Packaging

1. Thermoformed Blister Packs
2. Cold form blister packs
3. Child-resistant blister pack
4. Single seal blister cards
5. Fold over blister cards
6. Calendar blister packs
7. Peel of blister packs
8. Push through blister Packs

The above are some of the types of blisters packaging’s

Let’s see the most common used blister packaging process (1&2)

1. Base foil and Lidding foil selection – Blister forming film is selected depending on use we can use PVDC film or aluminum and PVC as a base foil and lidding foils like aluminum is used.
2. Forming of blisters for placing the unit dosage forms through cold forming and thermoforming. cold forming uses aluminum-based film which can be made into cavity without the application of heat.
3. Filling the blisters via automatic feeders
4. sealing of blisters can be done via heat sealing or some companies use cold sealing. The lidding foil is placed on the filled blister cavities and by application of heat , heat sealing press seals the foil on to the blister.
5. The next steps include cutting of individual blisters and printing of the necessary details like label information which is discussed above.
6. The final steps of blister packaging include placing the individual blisters in cartons along with package inserts and labelling of cartons with product information, Manufacuring and expiry date.

This is the blister packaging process, and we are not discussing the in process checks or quality checks here and will be discussed in the next article.