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During the writing of two other books covering processing standards and the colloid science involved in making medicinal products, I wanted to cover more of the technology of the process of manufacture and the materials used to contain and secure these very expensive and potentially hazardous materials – and this idea began in my mind more than 10 years ago. In addition to taking an interest in fashioning a food or pharmaceutical product through chemistry, I am also interested in the starting materials used in the design and fabrication of a product and its container. In a range of industrial activities and research programmes with companies, other than the fundamental medical science and technology where I do much of my research, I cover packaging and non‐pharmaceutical or food materials and their design, potential reuse, and recycling.

This book is targeted at a wide‐ranging audience yet with specific interests relevant to a programme of study of routine handling, use, and testing of packaging forms or packaging materials. Most people are acquainted with packaging at some level but this book does not deal with everyday concepts; rather, it provides an insight into areas of interest where specific scientific and technological knowledge of packaging is needed for what essentially constitutes ‘consumed’ products. The book, however, is pragmatically broader in its remit than this and also details common and rarer packaging types and their properties and relevant technologies of manufacture, method of forming, and design for purpose. The three major fields covered are those of pharmaceutical, food, and medical device packaging (pack, seals, and closures) and the underlying processes used to create them. The book is simultaneously intended as a technical reference and as a study aid. To this end there are some calculations, problems, and dilemmas at the end of the book to help users in what is now a tried, tested, and popular format and a form of subject revision. This book should be useful for undergraduates and postgraduates alike in that it covers three of the top six big industries that make use of or derive products (medicines, food, medical devices, agriculture, petrochemical, electronics) and that are likely to be faced by modern science graduates with a suitable ‘flavouring’ of current research and some experimental data to cut across preliminary and advanced study. Naturally, being of interest to postgraduates means that this book will also be of interest to industry experts, although I would not profess to provide an authoritative guide to individual material or packaging forms in the mere several hundred pages provided here. The unique nature of this book lies in the simultaneous discussion of inter‐related fields and of chemistry, physics, engineering, and therapeutic aspects within the same volume. Foods, pharmaceuticals and medical devices and the packaging that protects them account for more than half of all the packaging needs of the Western world. I use my expertise in nano‐materials, physics, biomaterials, chemistry, chemical engineering, manufacturing, industrial practice, medicine, and food technology to populate this book more appropriately to the reader covered by the remit as indicated primarily in the full title.

The book's strengths lie in its accessible format and design that covers key topics that feature in so many professional and specific modular courses cover this subject theme. Unfortunately, many books only discuss small aspects of a larger picture; where they do describe the range of products they often miss out on application. My interest, along with most industrialists, is in emphasising the applicability of various aspects of packaging science and technology, yet illustrating that final use is dictated by the quality and chemical nature of the raw materials (ore, oil, minerals, and biomaterials) or starting materials (plastics, tinplate, glass, and paper) and the means of evaluating their suitability (quality indices, performance, and stability testing). I consider that a major asset of this book is its universality in such a synopsis of a broad yet specific content. The book is aimed primarily at all pharmaceutical, medical science and food technology courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level and ‘packaging industry’ professionals needing referential information and rapid exposure to ‘packaging and application’ relevant information at the graduate and postgraduate level. Special physical features include problems and solutions, numerical values, assertions and projections, illustrations, and an attempt at simplification along with a suitable degree of technical content.

The idea for this book came to me some time ago during discussions with my dear long‐standing friends and former colleagues – Dr James O'Reilly, Dr Ewen Brierley, Dr Martin Wickham, Dr Michel Cornec, Dr Romain Briandet, Professor Reinhard Miller, Dr David Clark, Professor Brian Robinson, Professor Peter Wilde, Yves Popineau, and Professor Daniel Bonn – during a brief period when we worked together in the UK, Germany, and France. Our discussions – both serious and jocular – prompted me to start thinking about a technical book worthy of writing that might combine chemistry, physics, and engineering with my more newly discovered and passionate area of interest of sustainability and recycling in the context of industrial processes. More than 20 years on and after writing two ‘pharmaceutical technology’ books en route, I finally got around to writing a book covering materials, processes, and design applications despite some very serious health hiccoughs along the way. The person who got me through this most difficult spell and barrage of illnesses, ultimately achieving complete recovery, was my wonderful wife, Dr Ralitza Valtcheva‐Sarker. I guess part of the credit for pushing me to write this book also has to go to colleagues past and those present at my current place of employment in the School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of Brighton, UK. My colleagues shared out new lectures in medical and pharmaceutical packaging and pharmaceutical and medical device technology to me and, therefore, pushed me into an area not studied at length before.

Dipak K. Sarker

Brighton

2020