Capping technologies rise to throughput challenge


As demand continues to grow for reagents, the latest capping technologies are focused on speed and accuracy. Sean Ottewell reports.


Comme la demande du secteur de la santé continue d’augmenter pour une gamme de réactifs, les technologies de couverture les plus récentes s’intéressent à la vitesse et à la précision. Rapports de Sean Ottewell.


Angesichts des immer weiter zunehmenden Nachfrage nach einer Vielzahl von Reagenzien im medizinischen Sektor konzentrien sich die jüngsten Verschlussverfahren auf Geschwindigkeit und Genauigkeit. Ein Bericht von Sean Ottewell.


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aced with rising demand for its range of blood grouping reagents, Reading, UK-based Lorne Laboratories has installed a Flexicon FF30 semi-automatic tabletop filling and capping machine from Watson-Marlow. Te machine has both doubled throughput and halved the operation’s labour requirement at this progressive and rapidly growing UK manufacturer, helping it fulfil orders from blood transfusion, immunology and sero- diagnosis professionals in more than 80 countries around the world.


Established for over 30 years, Lorne Laboratories is the only company of its type in England and as such has enjoyed prolonged success in its field of expertise. Te company’s ethos is matching a high quality product


with attractive prices. However, due to the high levels of responsiveness demanded by the medical sector, the company was recently faced with a dilemma to keep up with throughput.


“Every day counts in the medical sector, particularly regarding blood, and as a company we need to be responsive to the everyday challenges faced by the industry,” says the company’s production manager Andy Gould. “Until recently we were using manual methods to fill 10ml vials with blood reagents, ie hand filling and then screwing on caps, at a rate of 2000–3000 vials a day.”


But with order quantities increasing this wasn’t enough to satisfy demand and Gould knew that introducing


tightening for volumes up to 1200 units an hour, depending on the application.


Above The modular machine offers handling, aseptic filling and cap


a degree of automation into the process was the only way to for the company to progress.


“Watson-Marlow had already made us aware of the virtues of Flexicon technology, but at the time our volumes weren’t sufficient enough to justify the investment,” he says. “However, with business going up and up we soon realised that manual filling and capping methods could not be sustained.”


Based on peristaltic pumping principles, the Flexicon FF30 from Watson-Marlow is a semi-automatic, modular machine that offers handling, aseptic filling and cap tightening for volumes up to 1200 units an hour, depending on the application (above).


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