Blister packaging for food supplements under your brand

Which supplements can be packed in blister packs?

Tablets, capsules and softgels can be packed in blister packs, on a ready-made formula or on your own. Blister packing here is the last stage of making your product under contract: the tablets, capsules or softgels are produced, sealed into blisters and put into a carton printed for your brand.

Ready-made formulas made as tablets, capsules or softgels can go into a blister as well as into a bottle, and so can a formula of your own. The product decides which of the two suits it; the size of the dose decides whether it fits the blister.

Every tablet and capsule we make has its own blister form. Tooling is in place for:

• oval tablets of 22 × 10, 20 × 9.5 and 16 × 8 mm;
• round tablets of 13, 12 and 11 mm;
• capsules in sizes 0 long (0EL), 0 and 00.

A blister of your own design, or a tablet or capsule in a size without tooling, starts from 25,000 cartons or 50,000 blisters, on terms agreed per project. Softgels are sealed on the same Uhlmann B 1240 as tablets and capsules; send the softgel size with the enquiry and the cavity is confirmed in our reply. Delayed-release tablets and capsules are available on request.

Powders, syrups, oils and effervescent tablets are filled into our other packaging: bottles, tubes, doy-packs and sachets.

How does a tablet or capsule end up sealed in a printed carton?

On two machines in sequence: an Uhlmann B 1240 makes and seals the blister, and an IMA IC 150 puts the blisters into the carton.

The Uhlmann B 1240: forming, filling, sealing, cutting

The B 1240 is built by Uhlmann Pac-Systeme in Laupheim, Germany. In one pass it shapes the forming film into cavities, fills them with tablets, capsules or softgels, seals the lidding foil printed for your brand over them and cuts out the finished blisters. According to the machine documentation:

• rated output is up to 250 blisters a minute, a figure Uhlmann also gives on its own product page;
• the forming area is up to 128 × 156.5 mm per cycle;
• cavities are formed up to 24 mm deep in PVC (thermoforming); cold-formed aluminium is shallower;
• the lidding foil is sealed by a flat plate at low temperature;
• the machine is run from a TouchControl panel with password login and audit trails of production and parameters.

The 250 a minute is the ceiling of the machine; the figure to plan with is from 2 weeks of production. The audit trails give each run a record on the machine itself, so the settings it was sealed with can be traced afterwards.

The IMA IC 150: cartoning

The IC 150 is an intermittent-motion cartoner built by IMA in Italy. It takes cartons from 28 × 12 × 55 mm to 92 × 60 × 190 mm (width × height × length) and puts 1 to 4 blisters into each. The batch number, the production date and the expiry date go on the carton; the dates are printed with the carton or applied at this stage as the blisters go in.

How many doses fit on one blister depends on the size of the tablet or capsule, within a forming area of up to 128 × 156.5 mm per cycle.

The full data for both machines: equipment.

What is the minimum order and production time for blister packing?

A blister run starts from 2,000 cartons and at least 4,000 blisters, with production from 2 weeks, the same on a ready-made formula and on your own. The run is counted in cartons and blisters; the minimum for other formats is on minimum order quantity, and production times are on lead times.

• Cartons. Each holds 1 to 4 blisters.
• Lidding foil. Printed for your brand.
• Dates. The batch number, the production date and the expiry date go on the carton.
• Shipping. Added separately to the production time; EXW by default, FCA or DAP on request.

Bottle orders run on different terms; they are set out under "When is a bottle the better pack?" below.

Why do brands choose blisters for supplements?

Because a blister keeps every dose shut until the moment it is pushed out, and shows when a cavity has been opened. What that means in use:

• One cavity, one dose. Pressing a tablet through the foil breaks open its own cavity and no other. A bottle works the other way: each time the cap comes off, room air reaches all the doses still inside.
• Opening is visible. Foil broken over a cavity cannot be sealed again, so an opened or missing dose shows on the card. That is what makes a blister tamper-evident.
• The doses left are easy to count. The card shows how many remain without anything being opened.
• A card can travel alone. One blister can leave the carton for a journey or a day away from home while the others stay inside.
• Your brand is on two surfaces. The carton and the lidding foil are both printed for you.

What the format does not settle by itself is the barrier. How much moisture and oxygen reach a closed cavity depends on the film and the lidding foil, so a blister is not the stronger pack by definition. The two formats side by side: blister or bottle.

Which blister films are offered: PVC, PVC/PVDC or aluminium?

PVC, PVC/PVDC, PET and aluminium laminates, among them cold-formed aluminium (alu-alu), are offered for your product on the Uhlmann line. The lidding is heat-sealable aluminium foil printed with your brand, and paper or polymer lidding with a heat-seal coating is available too. Materials and the blister construction are chosen to suit the product and the protection it needs.

For a sense of scale, take size 00 capsules: a 100 × 70 mm card with 10 cavities of 26 × 10.9 mm, 9.4 mm deep, in 250 µm transparent PVC, sealed with 20 µm hard aluminium foil. The final cavity is set once we have a sample of your product.

The film classes differ in more than barrier. PVC is thermoformed, and on this machine its cavities can be up to 24 mm deep; cold-formed aluminium is shallower, which limits the size of dose a cavity can take, and it is opaque, so the dose cannot be seen through the cavity. Barrier figures in film datasheets also need care: they describe flat film before forming, and as an engineer at a packaging manufacturer has pointed out in a trade article, shaping the cavity thins the laminate, so its barrier can fall with it.

For a product that will also be sold in the EU, film choice has one regulatory side: Regulation (EU) 2025/40 has limited PFAS in food-contact packaging placed on the EU market since 12 August 2026, and fluorinated films such as PCTFE fall under that question.

The films, the foil and what each suits: blister films. Published barrier figures by film, and their limits: blister packaging for hot and humid climates.

When is a bottle the better pack?

When the product keeps longer in a bottle with desiccant, when you need a smaller first order, or when the dose does not suit a blister.

How long the product keeps. A blister is not the stronger pack by default. A 2017 modelling study, published in the trade journal Pharmaceutical Technology, estimated the shelf life of one moisture-sensitive multivitamin tablet containing 100 mg of thiamine at 30 °C/75 % RH, with the bottles modelled at 60 cc holding 30 tablets. It put that tablet at 2.6 years in an HDPE bottle with 2 g of silica gel, 1.7 years in a cold-formed aluminium blister, 1.2 years in a bottle without desiccant and 0.5 years in a PVC blister. Read it as one worked case: a calculation for one product at one condition rather than a test, in a trade journal, with its figure credited to a desiccant supplier. It shows that which pack holds a product longer depends on the product.

Order size and time. A bottle order can start smaller. A ready-made formula starts from 100 units in stock packaging, with production from 2 weeks. Your own formula starts from 500 bottles per product, with production from 4 weeks. Powders, sachets, sports nutrition, syrups and oils are counted in kilograms or litres: see minimum order quantity.

The dose itself. A tablet or capsule in a size without blister tooling needs a run of 25,000 cartons or 50,000 blisters before it can have a blister of its own, on terms agreed per project.

How does a blister order run, step by step?

In seven steps, with the sample and the artwork approved by you before production starts.

1. Enquiry. Tell us the dose form, whether the formula is ready-made or your own, how many cartons you plan and the country of sale. We reply within 24 hours, Monday to Friday.
2. Sample. For a ready-made formula you receive a sample of the existing product; a formula of your own is first developed into a sample. The sample shows the real size of the tablet or capsule, and with it whether the blister tooling in place fits.
3. Approval. You approve the sample, then the artwork for the carton and the lidding foil. Printing waits for your approval of the final version.
4. Production. A blister run takes from 2 weeks of production.
5. Blister and carton. The Uhlmann B 1240 seals the tablets, capsules or softgels under the foil printed for your brand, and the IMA IC 150 places 1 to 4 blisters in each printed carton, with the batch number, production date and expiry date on the carton.
6. Documents. The batch leaves with its Certificate of Analysis and specification; copies of the site certificates are sent on request.
7. Delivery. EXW by default, FCA or DAP on request. Shipping time is added to the production time and depends on the destination.

The whole order, bottles included: manufacturing.

Who designs the carton and the lidding foil?

We lay out and print the carton to the label rules of your market, which your importer confirms, and print the lidding foil with your brand. Artwork you already have can be used instead. Your own packaging can be used on request. Only the artwork version you have approved is printed.

The batch number, the production date and the expiry date are on the carton; the dates are printed with the carton or applied as the blisters are cartoned, not added later as a sticker.

Is a blister right for hot and humid markets?

It can be: each dose sits sealed in its own cavity, and an opened cavity is visible; how much moisture reaches a closed cavity depends on the film and foil confirmed for the product and on what the regulator in the country of sale asks for.

WHO's stability guideline ties the long-term test condition to the climatic zone of the market the product is meant for: 30 °C/65 % RH for zone IVa and 30 °C/75 % RH for zone IVb. In WHO's list of stability conditions by country (update of March 2021), Nigeria and Ghana are given 30 °C/75 % RH, which corresponds to zone IVb, while Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt are given 30 °C/65 % RH, which corresponds to zone IVa. Both documents were written for medicines, so for a supplement they are a frame of reference rather than law.

Some regulators tie the stability data to the pack itself. Ghana's Food and Drugs Authority, in its guideline for supplements, asks for the studies to be done in the container closure system in which the product will be marketed in Ghana.

The manufacturing group behind HYPERPHARM supplies buyers in every country of Africa, and its main markets are the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon. Registering the product in the country of sale is the brand owner's step, or the importer's; for that file we provide the Certificate of Analysis and specification of each batch, and copies of the site certificates on request.

More on heat, humidity and the pack: blister packaging for hot and humid climates, climatic zones by country and shelf life and storage.

Blister or bottle: which suits my product?

A tablet, capsule or softgel that fits the tooling in place suits a blister: from 2,000 cartons and at least 4,000 blisters, with production from 2 weeks. A bottle in stock packaging takes a ready-made formula from 100 units and your own formula from 500 bottles per product. The product settles more of the blister than the brief does. Below, what each kind of product changes and what that costs you in time, run size or risk.

Questions buyers ask about blister packing

Read more

Equipment · Blister or bottle · Blister packaging for hot and humid climates · Climatic zones by country · Shelf life and storage · White label supplements · Private label supplements · Manufacturing · Quality and batch documents · Tablets in blisters · Capsules in blisters · Blister films · Blister artwork guide