(16a) Scale-up of Valor® Coated Glass Vials for the Pharmaceutical Industry

Over the last 10 years Corning has applied expertise in glass science and other core technologies to develop Valor® Glass— a purpose-built pharmaceutical glass specifically designed to address the challenges of today’s manufacturing operations. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the demand for these Valor® Glass vials increased dramatically due to their higher filling line throughput and improved damage resistance during cold storage compared to standard borosilicate vials. The vials are chemically strengthened through ion exchange and a low coefficient of friction coating is applied to the exterior surface to improve machinability. With increased vial demand came the need to rapidly increase capacity, so Corning built a new factory in Durham, NC with production beginning in Fall of 2021. This presentation will discuss the best-practices and key learnings that enabled the timely and cost-effective scale-up of the manufacturing processes used to produce Valor® glass vials.