Pfizer has opened a new £7m cold storage facility near Portsmouth that will be among Europe’s largest vaccine stores.

The new facility at the company’s Havant packaging and distribution site can store up to 38.4 million doses of vaccines and injectable medicines.

Its vaccines packaging line is believed to be the world’s fastest complex syringe packaging system.

As Pfizer goes ahead with the plan to close its R&D facility in Sandwich, Kent, the new storage facility reflects a positive shift in its UK strategy.

Science Minister David Willetts, who opened the new facility, commented: “This £7 million investment from Pfizer will deliver a cutting-edge cold storage facility and comes on top of £26.3 million already invested in a state-of-the-art biotechnology packaging facility.

“This reflects the enormous importance Pfizer attaches to its UK operations and its ability to serve the global pharmaceutical community.”

Jon Tucker, site leader for Pfizer at Havant, noted that the site was already recognised as a Centre of Excellence for cold chain packaging and distribution.

“We have a specialist team here that have developed technologies that are leading the way in this complex area of supply and logistics,” he said.

“It all goes together to make something very special, a £7 million building that has 3,500 pallet spaces to store life-changing and life-saving medicines. These get shipped to 122 destinations around the world.”

Pfizer has withdrawn approximately 1 million packs of birth control pills in the US that may contain dosage errors making their contraceptive effect unreliable.

Some packs of 28 tablets were found to contain the wrong proportion and/or sequence of active and inactive tablets, due to packaging errors.

The company has recalled 14 lots of Lo/Ovral-28 tablets and 14 lots of a generic version – both manufactured by Pfizer and sold under its subsidiary brand Akrimax Pharmaceuticals.

The packs have been recalled from clinics, retain pharmacies and warehouses across the US.

There is no evidence that the faulty packs could have adverse health effects, but their birth control efficacy is potentially compromised.

Each pack of 28 tablets should contain 21 white tablets with the active ingredients norgestrel and ethinyl estradiol, to be taken daily for three weeks, and a further seven inactive pink tablets to be taken for a week.

“An investigation by Pfizer found that some blister packs may contain an inexact count of inert or active ingredient tablets and that the tablets may be out of sequence,” a Pfizer spokesperson said.

The company attributed the problem to a combination of mechanical and visual inspection failures in product assembly.

It recommended that “consumers exposed to affected packaging should begin using a non-hormonal form of contraception immediately”.

To see Pfizer’s public information video on this issue, click here.

Medical device outsourcing company Vention Medical has acquired ATEK Medical Group, a leader in medical device assembly, packaging and injection moulding.

Dan Croteau, CEO of Vention Medical, said, “Our partnership with the ATEK Medical Group management team will allow Vention to provide an enhanced customer experience. Like Vention, ATEK Medical Group aspires to continually satisfy customers through intense focus on services that improve quality, innovation, and cost.”

The acquisition will incur a variety of combined capabilities and services, including product design and development, innovative component technologies, along with the manufacturing space of 175,000 square feet at its Costa Rica campus.

ATEK recently opened a second facility in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to support customer demands in the US.

Chris Oleksy, President of ATEK Medical, and Tom Houdeshell of ATEK Plastics, said that Vention’s experience and capabilities in design, components and assembly makes Vention “a very appealing partner for us”.

Vention Medical specialises in components and services used in interventional and minimally-invasive products, including medical balloons, advanced extrusions and heat shrink tubing, clean room injection moulding, assembly and packaging services.