Blister line installed in record time
Marchesini Group has collaborated with PharmaPac UK, a Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturer that has been supporting companies worldwide in the production and packaging of pharmaceutical, veterinary and nutraceutical products for more than 25 years.
The UK based company required a quick response from Marchesini Group and delivery of the blister line for solid dose products to meet urgent demand for extremely high volumes. The Group rose to the challenge, accommodating PharmaPac’s needs by supplying an integrated robotised monobloc packaging machine consisting of a blister packaging machine and a cartoning machine in just six months.
Marchesini Group was able to meet the ambitious request due the new approach on the production of the blister line based on standardisation of the main model and production in batches. Due to this, the Group had a machine in stock that then needed final customisation to meet the customer requirements. Additionally in the last few years, Marchesini Group has standardised all the electrical and pneumatic components throughout the product range. This means that the supply of all the critical components has been more effective, limiting the impact of the global shortage.
Throughout the project, there was close cooperation between the PharmaPac team and the Group’s Carpi-based blister division, Italy’s largest thermoforming machine construction hub with fifty years’ know-how and experience in the sector.
“PharmaPac have been impressed throughout the project with the support provided by Marchesini Group. From the beginning, the response time and proposal provided by the Marchesini Group Sales team was prompt and thorough, all the way through to site visits both at PharmaPac and Marchesini, to the delivery of the equipment in our required timeline. We understood the complexity of the project due to the timeline, however Marchesini Group managed to make this achievable.” – Gareth Lewis (Managing Director, PharmaPac UK).
Marchesini Group INTEGRA line: flexibility and speed
The INTEGRA monobloc line is ideal for the blister packaging of solid dose products. Designed in-house, it consists of two main sections: the thermoforming unit and the cartoning section. They are connected by an integrated robot which allows blisters to be transferred directly from primary to secondary packaging, while maintaining a compact design. This high-tech three-axis robot, which feeds the blisters into the cartons can be programmed to perform various stacking sequences depending on the number of blisters set. It is controlled by software for automatic synchronisation of the product transfer, traceability and stacking system.
Three smart cameras supervise the vertical forming material heating and thermoforming, the continuous motion platen sealing, the high speed zero-waste cutting system and the product feeding. This allows the machine to self-adjust in real time in every single cycle, allowing easy and consistent operations with all the conventional materials like PVC and Aluminium, but also to make mono materials blisters with sustainable and recyclable/recycled ones like PET, RPET, PE, PP and PVC-free cold formable ALU.
To guarantee product quality the monobloc machine, able to produce up to 420 blisters and 200 cartons per minute, is equipped with state-of-the-art vision system technologies to check the presence, integrity and quality of the product inside the blister and check the codes of the leaflet and carton.