Optel Vision plans $10m investment on track & trace

Optel Vision is planning a dramatic increase in headcount over the next 18 months to meet the demand for traceability in the pharma industry.

With plans for medicines traceability crystallising both in Europe and the US around serialised coding with 2D barcodes, vendor companies have been reporting a surge in demand for services supporting these activities.

Optel Vision is no exception, and now says it will invest $10m over the next 18 months to expand distribution resources in Europe, the Americas and Asia, a drive that will also add around 400 new workers by 2016.

The investment programme will focus on expanding Optel's manufacturing and engineering operations in India, establishing a European facility in Germany for local engineering, software support, factory acceptance testing and a spare parts warehouse.

It will also increase the local deployment of project managers and field technicians to support companies around the world in updating packaging lines to deliver serialised products.

"As regulation agencies are enforcing measures against counterfeit products, Optel Vision is [supporting] the pharmaceutical manufacturing industries which are deeply involved in this critical fight," said the company.

Last year, Optel Vision joined forces with TraceLink to provide serialisation services to the drug industry, marrying its packaging line management systems with TraceLink's cloud-based track-and-trace platform, and also linked with Frequentz, which acquired IBM's InfoSphere traceability platform in 2012.

It also completed construction in 2013 of a 25,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility to accommodate large-scale serialisation projects.