Wasdell Group drives continued growth as a full turnkey solution provider
Wasdell Group (Wasdell) was founded in 1971 as a contract packaging company. The business remained family operated until it was sold in 2009, and since the acquisition, has grown significantly. Andy Causer, Director of Sales, outlines the journey: “Since the current owner took over, alongside primary and secondary packaging, we’ve continually expanded the services we offer. We acquired a storage and distribution company to complement our existing portfolio, providing primary and secondary packaging as well as storage and distribution in-house. We are currently shipping in the region of 36,000 packages on a daily basis.”
As a fast-growing contract service partner offering end-to-end supply chain services, Wasdell currently operates across multiple sites in Europe. It ships to over 47 countries, enabling the supply of critical medicines across the globe, supporting customers from clinical to commercial supply, with a particular focus on flexible, small batch packaging and oral liquid manufacturing. Customer-centric in its approach, the company offers the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and veterinary industries tailored solutions to meet their needs.
“Further acquisition of an engineering company was also integrated into the group,” Andy shares, “which has enabled us to build and produce all our own blister tooling. This has provided us with a significant market advantage. Relying on the main machine manufacturers results in long lead times for a set of tooling. We can now produce our own blister tool in as little as four-to-six weeks or within eight weeks at most. What this evolution demonstrates is a drive towards building an independent turn-key solution with short lead times.
“We have systems in place to assist third party companies that require support with aggressive timelines. Having control over the various touch points throughout the process from manufacturing right the way through to distribution is a significant advantage. Over the years, we’ve grown into an operation with over 450 employees across the group. Our diverse workforce and operating hours provide flexibility and maintain a dedicated customer service.”
Andy goes on to shed more light on the specific services Wasdell provides: “We offer a comprehensive range of packaging services, including the blistering and bottling of solid dose products, sachet filling of powders, liquids, creams and gels, as well as liquid manufacturing. In terms of secondary packaging, we can support a range of services including changes in livery, re-working, labelling, and kit assemblies. Additionally, we have a range of support functions including track and trace capabilities to help combat the counterfeiting of medicines, cold chain storage and distribution services, CD storage and laboratory services.”
Indeed, Wasdell offers its customers access to experienced laboratory analysts, microbiologists and managed contract laboratory capabilities. Its laboratories offer
analytical capabilities for chemical, physical and microbiological analysis including HPLC testing services, FTIR and wet chemistry. With scope for expansion, Wasdell ensures it can deliver services that fit with its clients’ needs. Strong client relationships ensure the company fully understands requirements for transfer and qualification of test methods, ensuring a quick and easy route to QC release testing.
Wasdell provides true partnership, and its customers appreciate this personalized approach. The team tackles every project with a solution-driven mindset that helps to forge long-term customer partnerships. “We value our employees; we promote from within wherever possible and make sure we listen to our staff, taking on their ideas and any opportunities they find,” Andy adds. “We also find that by operating on an international scale, the depth of diversity in our workforce provides significant benefits. Communication with international clients can be significantly easier when our staff can utilize different languages and communicate with an awareness of cultural differences. This is also very well received by our clients.”
Partner of choice
The company continually invests in the improvement and expansion of its services and facilities to meet the changing requirements of customers and their industries. Specialist machinery and highly trained staff enable Wasdell to provide high-quality products as standard. Fully GMP accredited, the group holds all necessary licenses for the packing, manufacturing and distribution of pharmaceutical, healthcare and nutritional products as well as licensed drugs.
Customers range in size from virtual companies to major multinationals and Wasdell’s flexibility enables the fulfillment of differing requirements quickly and efficiently. By offering highly competitive lead-times and an unrivalled level of quality, Wasdell continues to strengthen its market position as the contract service partner of choice to the pharmaceutical, healthcare and veterinary sectors.
Looking to the future, Wasdell is set to continue its impressive growth phase. Andy concludes with some details on the strategy: “We want to grow not just organically but also through acquisition. The team is always looking to support potential clients by collaborating and identifying suitable synergies. In the next five years we will look to have successfully separated the pharmaceutical and health and nutrition sectors of the business. This will streamline operations and facilitate more growth in each sector.”