Founded as California Litho Co. in 1964 and recently changing its name to better reflect its capabilities, the company has established a solid reputation for adapting to the ever-changing print needs of the complex pharmaceutical industry. Presently, 85 people cover two shifts at PHARMACEUTIC's 28,000 sq. ft. facility that produces everything from inserts and product manuals, to bottle and vial labels. It also offers patent-pending label options, including sling labels, expanded-information labels and booklet labels (with or without slings) for different sized bottles.


MBS specialist David Fasanella collects the glued booklets as they exit the trimming unit.

Tom Moore, President of PHARMACEUTIC Litho & Label, credits two underlying factors for its growth—timely investments in the latest equipment, systems and processes and careful employment of trained and experienced people—both critical to answering the highly specialized needs of its rapidly growing customer base.

Moore believes, "The real value of a vendor is gauged by how well they meet a client's needs—especially the tight turnarounds common to this business. We've been involved in many of our customers' product launches, oftentimes working around-the-clock to help make their drug launch a success. In many cases, we find ourselves working with clients' engineers to solve design problems."

The proliferation of new government regulations is further complicated by "senior-friendly" marketing strategies that call for larger, more legible type. This entails providing consumers with substantially more product information on larger leaflets, booklets, or outserts, while the size of of the packaging has essentially remained the same.

According to Moore, addressing these new copy space requirements in cost-effective formats compatible with existing packaging poses unique production challenges—particularly in bindery operations. The purchase of the Vijuk Miniature Glued Booklet System will answer some of these challenges.

The incorporation of an integrated glue-verification system onto the MBS (miniature booklet system), as Moore calls it, is very important in assuring clients of complete information products.

"When glue is not applied, pages could potentially fall out of the booklet once it's in the hands of the consumer. To ensure that doesn't happen, the glue-detection system automatically stops the machine and alerts us when there's a problem," explains Moore, who makes the point that—because the glue is clear—it is virtually impossible to visually detect whether or not it has been applied. It can detect a dot of glue as small as 0.032".

Diane Lammersen, Bindery Manager, says they selected the Vijuk unit after comparing it with a similar but much larger and more expensive system requiring significant custom design to meet PHARMACEUTIC's needs. The other system could not produce booklets as small or with as many pages. The Vijuk system is capable of making miniature booklets of up to 40 pages as small as 21/4" x 2".

Folder technician-MBS specialist David Fasanella says, "The user-friendly machine is easy to set up and program. Parallel folds are made, and the glue is applied. Next they are put into a knife fold, and then into a last right-angle fold. The folded booklets travel into an in-line, five-knife booklet trimmer where they are trimmed to size." (The number of knives can be 3 to 7 for one- to three-up production.)


MBS specialist Jorge Cassillas monitors the booklet making process, including the glue verification, at the station folder.

"Before this new system, the largest number of pages for a glued booklet we could produce was 12," says Fasanella. "Now we produce smaller booklets with more pages on our booklet labels." The Vijuk MBS also features a special unit to crimp the pages and keep them from opening during label application. This solves the problem of booklets opening up during label application and resulting in misregistration.

"Though this MBS is a prototype machine, we feel confident we can count on Vijuk to follow up on any problems," says Moore. "Usually they can solve problems over the phone...and parts are almost always in stock and available for overnight delivery."

Evident of a 20-year relationship with Vijuk, PHARMACEUTIC operates five Vijuk –G&K SVA/35 Series Miniature Folders (two of which are right-turn-angle [RTA] models), as well as two Vijuk MV-97 outsert attachments for spot gluing leaflets.

Moore stresses that the Vijuk MBS has opened new sales potential for miniature booklet production. Citing an expected 20 percent increase of this business for the coming year, he credits the MBS for solving a growing problem for PHARMACEUTIC'S customers.
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Written by Jim Plunkett, freelance writer.

(A similar article, Specialist Adds Miniature Booklet Unit, was published in the April 2001 Graphic Arts Monthly.)

Also see More Label for Your Buck in the May 2001 Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News.