The overall operating efficiency of Blow-Fill-Seal has two notable advantages over a comparable output glass filling line.
First, BFS has a smaller footprint of the filler itself and the overall lower footprint of the entire line. This is especially notable when considering the net relative output of a BFS line verses a glass filling or prefilled syringe line of a comparable physical size.
Second, filling efficiency, as determined by net final amount of bulk drug substance that is yielded from a particular batch, is on par or better than an equivalent glass line. Nominal ranges for filling efficiency with BFS are 90-95%.
However, there are many design factors of the filling suites, either for glass or BFS, that can impact these efficiency measurements.
These include distance of filling vessels from the fillers, compounding batch size ranges and tank volumes, piping arrangements, and IPC requirements for the process itself.