Legacy Pharmaceutical Packaging—a contract packager that provides bottling, blistering, pouching, unit-of-use, serialization, compliance, and secondary packaging services to the pharmaceutical industry—has purchased a 215,000 sq ft open-space facility to introduce comprehensive, wide-scale third-party logistics (3PL) and distribution services. Located near the company’s headquarters in the St. Louis area, the expansive building will extend Legacy’s servicing capabilities for over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription pharma customers, bringing the company’s total footprint to more than 500,000 sq ft.

“The new facility allows us to dramatically ramp up third-party logistics and distribution services that we’ve already been performing for quite some time,” said Dave Spence, Legacy CEO. “As the needs of our customers evolve, this provides an opportunity to offer a more comprehensive service offering well beyond our traditional role as a contract packaging organization. Increasingly, Legacy is becoming a turnkey, start-to-finish partner for preparing, finalizing and bringing finished products directly to market.”

The new space allows Legacy to significantly grow its existing 3PL operations, with plans to divide the open-design building into dedicated departments, including those comprising new SKU handling and artwork, a retail management team for real-time inventory monitoring and reordering, an automated oversight initiative to best ensure quality and price competitiveness via enhanced efficiencies, and a warehousing and shipping wing to finalize and deliver finished products.

The spacious building allows Legacy to continue to build on its full turnkey services, such as warehousing of bulk product to ultimately shorten product cycle times and afford customers an additional layer of safety stock to greatly reduce out-of-stock situations. This includes easier access points for OTC segments, which will help speed project turnaround and final delivery. For prescription products, expanded 3PL offerings will include an inventory portal, charge-back system, a serialization suite, and a returns processing department.

The facility also provides room for strategic space utilization. For example, Legacy plans to transition its existing labeling cage, currently located at its nearby primary manufacturing plant, to its new annex, a move that will pave the way for streamlined, just-in-time labels delivery. The building also provides additional room for component overflow, as well as a place for newer initiatives, such as Legacy’s recent purchase of three high-speed blistering and cartoning lines with serialization and aggregation capabilities from McKesson RxPak’s production facility in Memphis, Tenn.