By Michel Terwolbeck, Global Sales Director, Wipak Health
In today’s rapidly evolving global landscape, resilience and reliability have never been more critical, especially in healthcare, where supply continuity directly impacts patient safety.
The ongoing war in Ukraine and the escalating tensions in the Middle East are not only humanitarian crises—they are also reshaping global supply chains in profound ways. One particularly significant development is the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, a vital gateway for raw materials used across industries, including raw materials for flexible packaging.
The consequences are already visible. Volatility in the availability and pricing of key raw materials is increasing, leading to necessary price adjustments across the market. While these developments are widely recognized, their implications for healthcare packaging supply chains are especially critical.
At Wiicare, we fully understand the responsibility we carry. Our products, sterile barrier systems and hospital sterilization packaging, are essential components in safeguarding patient health. Therefore, despite the challenging environment, we are taking every possible measure to mitigate supply risks. Through proactive sourcing strategies, strong supplier partnerships, and global production flexibility, we are committed to ensuring that our customers experience no disruption in supply.
While the external environment remains volatile, we are simultaneously strengthening our global value proposition. A key pillar in this strategy is Wiicare.
Launched in 2021, Wiicare has been very well received by the market. Our global partners have long expressed the need for suppliers that can deliver consistent, high-quality solutions across continents—ideally with identical products and harmonized standards worldwide. By joining the healthcare packaging strengths of Winpak and Wipak under the Wiicare name, we have taken significant steps forward. Today, Wiicare operates as one global team, aligned in its processes, mindset, and customer focus.
We are Wiicare: Everything we do is designed to CARE. For customers, patients, and the world around us.
This unified approach enables us to support our customers globally with greater agility, consistency, and confidence, especially in times when resilience is more important than ever.
To support long-term growth, Wipak Health is strengthening its manufacturing capabilities through a comprehensive investment program at its Nastola facility in Finland. This includes cleanroom expansion, new production equipment and improved operational efficiency. Over the past five years, Wipak has invested nearly €200 million in new and upgraded assets, expanding to 11 sites across Europe and Asia and employing 1,800 professionals.
In parallel, Wipak is investing in new production machinery and automation to enhance efficiency and performance. The program includes new pouch manufacturing lines, upgraded converting and slitting equipment, as well as automated material handling solutions such as conveyors and robotics, alongside improvements in packaging, quality control and process automation. Implementation across 2026–2027 enables a controlled ramp-up of capacity and improved operational reliability.
Looking beyond today’s challenges, we are firmly focused on the future. Under our Horizon 2030 vision, Wipak and Wiicare are preparing for the next phase of growth and transformation. While continued business growth remains a key priority, we equally recognize that the foundations of future success will be built on automation, harmonization, and digitalization.
These elements are becoming increasingly critical to drive efficiency and enhance responsiveness, while enabling more precise and standardised working processes across the organisation. At the same time, they support maintaining cost competitiveness, further elevating our already high standards of quality and accuracy, and strengthening our position as a frontrunner in sustainable packaging.
To support this journey, we have launched our internal development program WiLeap. Within WiLeap, multiple strategic workstreams are actively shaping the future of Wipak and Wiicare, all aimed at elevating our operational excellence and customer value even further.
Needless to say, “Customer Experience” is at the heart of Wiicare and WiLeap. Every initiative is designed not only to improve internal performance, but to create tangible benefits for our customers, through faster response times, greater transparency, improved consistency, and easier collaboration.
In essence, this development program is about ensuring that we are not only ready for 2030 but that we are setting new standards along the way.
The decisions and actions we are taking today from securing supply chains to optimizing our production footprint, strengthening Wiicare, and investing in WiLeap development programs, are all guided by one clear objective: ensuring long-term continuity, quality, and reliability for our customers.
At Wiicare, we strive for the highest standards in advanced manufacturing and cleanroom technology. Combined with our global reach and alignment, and the forward-looking drive of WiLeap, we are reinforcing our ability to deliver excellence in an increasingly complex world.
While global uncertainties persist, our mission remains unchanged: to protect patients by securing the availability of safe, high-quality healthcare packaging solutions.
At Wiicare, we cannot control geopolitical development but we can control how we respond. Through proactive decision-making, strong global partnerships under Wiicare, and future-focused initiatives like WiLeap, we will continue to navigate these challenges and emerge stronger.
We thank you for your trust and partnership.
Wiicare – Designed to Care.
