Pharmaceutical Packaging Equipment Manufacturer Boosts European Distribution

Belfast (Vocus) May 11, 2009 -- The Northern Ireland based manufacturer of innovative leak testing (http://www.sepha.com/en/products/leak-testing-equipment/pakscan%5bleak-testing%5d) and de-blistering equipment, Sepha Ltd (http://www.sepha.com/) is boosting its European distribution network ahead of its attendance at the world’s leading event for the chemical processing industry. Gearing up to do business at Achema, the major pharmaceutical industry event held every 3 years in Frankfurt, Sepha has appointed ra pharmatechnik as its German agent and is also partnering with ADMC in France.

Sepha’s CEO, Aubrey Sayers explains how these relationships will help more customers avail of Sepha’s range of innovative machines: “Both agents have vast experience of the pharmaceutical packaging industry and understand customers’ requirements. We are delighted to be able to work with them in providing our leak testing and deblistering (http://www.sepha.com/en/products/deblistering-equipment) solutions that improve quality assurance, increase production throughput and, above all, save money.”

The Sepha range will be on show at Achema including BlisterScan, which is a non-destructive (http://www.sepha.com/en/products/leak-testing-equipment) leak testing machine for blister packs. It can detect and locate leaks as small as 7 microns. Blister packs are scanned by a beam of light both before after a vacuum is applied. The difference between these scan readings is used to calculate the size of the hole in the blister pack. It is a non-destructive, clean, dry process so any packs that pass the test can be returned to the production line. Packs that fail the test can have the contents removed for repackaging using one of Sepha’s deblistering machines. The alternative Methylene blue dye test by comparison renders any tested blister packs unsaleable. PakScan is a similar non-destructive leak tester for pouches and sachets that can detect holes down to 10 microns.

Press-Out Manual is a small, portable, manual deblistering machine that is suitable for in-line push-through blister packs. It does not have any tooling to changeover and only takes about 3 minutes to set up for a new blister pack. It can de-blister up to 20 packs per minute and is operated manually by a handle. Press-Out Semi-automatic is a small, portable, semi-automatic deblistering machine that is suitable for push-through blister packs that have an in-line, diagonal or off-set format. It can de-blister up to 40 packs per minute. Packs are manually placed on the machine but then are fed through automatically. Set-up takes about 3 minutes. Press-Out Universal is the state-of-the-art automatic deblistering machine that is used by pharmaceutical manufacturers to recover tablets and capsules from blister packs, and is particularly suitable for fragile or expensive pills because of its gentle action.

It is suitable for all formats of push-through blister packs and also child resistant and peelable blister packs. Blister packs are automatically fed from the magazine into a cutting machine. A cut is made in the lidding material of the blister pack, around the base of the blister pocket. The tablets or capsules are then eased out of the blisters and collected separately from the packaging. Up to 50 blister packs can be de-blistered every minute, and tooling changeover takes about 5 minutes. EZ Blister is a lab-scale (http://www.sepha.com/en/products/blisterpacking-equipment) blister packing machine. It is suitable for runs of up to 20000 blister packs so is especially good for R&D labs. It forms, seals and cuts the blister packs and the resultant packs are of an equivalent quality to packs made on large automatic production lines.                

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