CPSA to upgrade with $1m of new equipment
LEADING contract packager Contract Pharmaceutical Services Australia (CPSA) is looking for $1 million worth of the latest in pharmaceutical packaging equipment for its new facility at North Ryde in Sydney.
A team headed by managing director Sol Cohen is at Interpack in Düsseldorf this month to research and source the equipment which will be installed at the custom-built 6300 square metre plant.
Cohen said CPSA was looking to upgrade its systems, especially by the use of robotics and servo driven machinery, to give it the ability to make more rapid changeovers accurately.
CPSA currently blister packs and bottles tablets, capsules and other medicinal products. It blister seals products onto cards or wallets, using semi or fully automatic rotary “Alloyd” machines.
“These lines have been retro-fitted with more automatic controls and vision verification systems, but we feel the time has come to take the next step up and make a major investment in more modern and robotic packaging machinery which uses auto-correcting sensing mechanisms in line and offers a more rapid and accurate change-over,” he said.
CPSA is contracted to many companies including local manufacturers as well as most of the major multinationals. However, much of its work has been short runs.
“Therefore, a quick turn around and complete confidence in the change-over correctness is very important to us.
“We handle all types of tablets, capsules, vials, bottles, syringes, tube filling and other small medical devices. Such a variety of products demands considerable versatility in plant set-up, with speedy, accurate change-overs.”
Cohen said some existing lines, dating back to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s would be decommissioned, but others which already had verification systems as standard features, would be integrated with the new equipment.
“The modern servo technology now available will give us a state-of-the-art facility with cost-cutting benefits such as faster set-up and change-over and auto-correction in line. This is what we will be looking at in Düsseldorf.
“Apart from blister packing, bottling and other specialised equipment, we will also be looking at laser printers, induction seal capping systems, carton tape sealing for tamper evidence, and more. Stand-alone cartoners and shrink wrapping equipment will also be on the shopping list,” he said.
Whatever equipment was purchased, it would be housed in a facility at North Ryde with a number of cutting-edge features, including HEPA air filtration in all open-product processing rooms along with several energy saving aspects.
10-Mar-2005