Trends toward outsourcing continue, and not just in manufacturing and packaging. Karen Greene, President of Life Pack Labs, reports increasing interest in external testing of products and packaging among manufacturers and suppliers of medical devices, combination products, food, and even pharmaceuticals.

“Today’s engineers are very busy with multiple projects, and they may not have the staff or even equipment to handle some of their testing,” she says. Additionally, beyond satisfying the essential regulatory requirements, engineers and other professionals may not be aware of the variety of testing technologies available to them for their packaging and product development activities.

In 2014, PMP News reported that Life Pack Labs was created through a partnership between MOCON and Life Packaging Technology LLC (LPT LLC), a packaging consultancy. (LPT LLC was founded by Stuart Long and is co-owned by Long and Greene.) Life Pack Labs will be on hand in MOCON’s booth (#1922) at the upcoming MD&M West 2016 in Anaheim, CA, February 9-11, 2016.

Reach-in chambers at Life Pack Labs

Life Pack Labs utilizes MOCON’s permeation, headspace analysis, and package integrity equipment to support its services for design, testing, and validation of packaging systems for sterile and non-sterile medical devices, biotechnology pharmaceutical, and food products. The lab also has an Instron universal test system, environmental chambers for thermal packaging validation services, and the ability to carry out several different package integrity testing methods.

Greene reports that the lab has already worked with a number of manufacturers. “We can design a custom testing program, and we focus on efficiency and maximum impact. We can review a customer’s suggested testing program for maximum utility and in some situations, we can reduce the amount of testing by 20%.”

"We can offer our clients a very powerful combination of consulting and testing services through our partnership with MOCON," says Greene. "We can even provide services such as packaging retort processing through our partnership with a university laboratory." 

Life Pack Labs is currently working toward ISO 17025 certification in 2016.

Visit http://www.lifepacklabs.com and www.mocon.com for more details. 

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Focused on medical device packaging?  Find medical packaging inspiration at MD&M West February 9-11 in Anaheim, CA.

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